Qualla: Woodford Island

Woodford Island: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Drop a finger on the Clarence River where it leaves Grafton and runs for the sea, and somewhere around the village of Brushgrove the river does something strange: it splits in two. The South Arm and the North Arm peel apart, embrace a vast wedge of flat green country, and only rejoin themselves nearly thirty kilometres downstream at the sugar town of Maclean. What they enclose is Woodford Island. At 37 square kilometres it is the largest island in New South Wales, inland or off the coast, and one of the largest non-delta river islands in the Southern Hemisphere. Roughly three hundred people live on it, mostly out of sight of one another, among cane that grows taller than a car.

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Image: Kgbo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Woodford Island: An Island You Can Drive Onto

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0. For a place ringed entirely by water, Woodford Island is oddly easy to reach. Two bridges and a ferry stitch it to the mainland. At the southern tip, the Wingfield Bridge crosses from Brushgrove to Cowper; at the northern end, the McFarlane Bridge carries you into Maclean, its na...

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Image: Chris Olszewski | CC BY-SA 4.0

Woodford Island: Cedar, and Blood

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0. Woodford Island was among the first places Europeans settled on the Far North Coast, and the reason was timber. The settler John Small arrived drawn by stands of Australian red cedar, the so-called red gold that pulled cutters up every navigable river in the colony. The original ...

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Image: Chris Olszewski | CC BY-SA 4.0

Woodford Island: When Brushgrove Was Boom Town

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0. It is hard to picture now, but Brushgrove at the island's southern end was once a roaring river port. Sitting on the Clarence with steamers calling at its wharves, the town shipped out timber, sugar and produce, and the wealth that flowed back built schools, shops, a police stati...

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Image: Chris Olszewski | CC BY-SA 4.0

Woodford Island: A Ridge Above the Floods

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0. Run a line through the island's near-exact centre and you strike a mountain ridge, an unexpected spine of high ground in a landscape that is otherwise pure floodplain. It gives Woodford Island both the largest area and the highest point of any island in the Clarence. Everything e...

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Image: Chris Olszewski | CC BY-SA 4.0