Lawrence is a small town 13 km from Maclean,

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. It is accessed by the Lawrence car ferry from Woodford Island or by travelling 30 kilometres north from Grafton. At the 2021 census, the population of Lawrence was 925.

Settlement

The first Irishman into the area was Richard Craig. Craig had escaped from the Moreton Bay convict settlement in 1830. Travelling South Craig had discovered the two big rivers in northern NSW, the Richmond and the Clarence. When he returned to the Port Macquarie penal settlement he revealed the existence of these rivers and was recruited to act as a guide for prospective settlers to the area. The first settlers were cedar-cutters. In 1842 William Robertson took a claim of 15,000 acres centred on the future township of Lawrence and named it "Lanark Lodge" after his childhood home in Scotland. Due to its locality Lawrence was the closest port from the tablelands future north. Traders and farmers began shipping their produce and minerals from Lawrence down to Sydney. In 1856 Jack Pringle built a road to service the inland communities. Lawrence at this time was a major alternative to the southern port in Grafton. Lawrence settlers had the difficulty of dealing with ten major floods in seven years during the 1870s. When the Railway arrived in Tenterfield in 1886 the demand for services in Lawrence dwindled.

Facilities

Lawrence has a number of sporting facilities including, a

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

field and

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

fields, a nine-hole golf course and tennis courts. Lawrence has a public school, a general store, post office, police station, Tavern and a local school and route bus service. It also has a museum ( Lawrence Museum) housed in the old radio station building as well as very well preserved Public Hall of timber construction dating from 1892. The town is in the Clarence Valley Council

local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such a ...

area.

Archie Roach Archibald William Roach (8 January 1956 – 30 July 2022) was an Australian (Gunditjmara and Western Bundjalung people, Bundjalung) singer-songwriter and Aboriginal Australian, Aboriginal activist. Often referred to as "Uncle Archie", Roach wa ...

's brother was named after the town, and he writes about a visit to the town he made in 2013. He was able to reconnect with some of the history of his father's Bundjalung family, after he saw a huge photo of the family in the museum.

References

Towns in New South Wales Northern Rivers Clarence Valley Council {{NorthernRivers-geo-stub