PORT MACQUARIE , at the mouth of the Hastings River, was established in 1821 as a place of secondary punishment for convicts who had committed offences after arrival in New South Wales, as well as for hardened criminals from Britain. By the late 1820s, however, the spread of population meant that this was no longer an isolated outpost, so the penal settlement was closed and the area was opened up to free settlers. The convicts who were still considered incorrigible were sent off either to Moreton Bay in the Brisbane area, or to remote Norfolk Island.

As with many other northern coastal ports, the harbour was unreliable and its approaches difficult, so for more than a century the town failed to live up to its early promise of commercial success. Prosperity and expansion finally came only with the tourism boom, which started in the early 1970s and shows no signs of abating; with a population of about forty thousand, Port Macquarie is now one of the fastest-growing towns on the north coast of New South Wales, particularly popular with older people from the southern cities who want to spend their retirement years in a sunny place with what the CSIRO meteorologists have declared "Australia's best year-round climate". If you approach from the south, you'll see the town's featureless suburbs sprawling along the beaches, encroaching further on the bush. Once visitors have reached the town itself, however, there are obvious scenic attractions - long, sandy beaches that start right in town and extend far along the coast, and forests and mountains in the hinterland - as well as plenty laid on in and around the town itself: amusement parks, mini-zoos, nature parks, cruises on the Hastings River and connecting waterways, horse riding and, above all, water sports and fishing.