Bongil Bongil

Sawtell was originally known as 'Bongil Bongil' (meaning long white sands). This was prior to white settlement when The Kumbaingeri Aborigines hunted and fished on Bonville Creek.

European settlement began when surveyor Greaves set aside 960 acres as Bonville Reserve in 1861.

Two years later Walter Harvey arrived with a bullock team to retrieve cedar logs from a cutter (a boat) which had been washed ashore on Sawtell Beach. He stayed on for the cedar and a small community emerged.

Between 1865 and 1923 development was slow. In 1923 Oswald Sawtell decided to subdivide the land he had bought.

The railway arrived in 1925, a post office opened in 1927, the first school was set up in 1928 and the Sawtell Hotel was licensed in 1932. The settlement was gazetted as Sawtell in 1927, however, in that same year (1927) when the road to the north opened, Coffs Harbour became the major local town.

See Also: Sawtell