W.W. Macindoe in Dorrigo

My great great uncle Walter Walker Macindoe was born in Govan, Lanarkshire, Scotland on 1 November 1866. He emigrated to Australia in 1884 with his family, on account of him having a weak constitution - it was thought the fresh Australian air might be better for him. Considering he died aged about 90, in 1955, it certainly seems to have done him no harm!

W.W. Macindoe married Matilda Francis in 1889, and they, with their four children moved to Dorrigo, NSW, in 1911. You can read some of what he wrote about moving to Dorrigo here. He had selected a plot of land, and he and his eldest son worked extremely hard to tame the land and make something of it. His descendants still live in the area.

I was interested to find the plot of land on a parish map, and so set about looking. According to the electoral lists of 1930 and 1936 his address was North Dorrigo. Looking at parish maps for land north of the village of Dorrigo I had no luck finding the name W.W. Macindoe, so I tried looking in the historical newspapers of Trove to see if there was anything on him and his selection of land. A search of "Macindoe Dorrigo" produced a result in the Clarence and Richmond Examiner for 7 July 1914 in an article on Crown Lands: "... also for road; also within W.W. Macindoe's portion 23, parish Meldrum Downs."

So this narrowed down the parish, and gave me the portion number for the land. I put "Meldrum" into the Parish Map Preservation Project website, clicked on "Meldrum Downs" and chose the first map available from after 1911. Right up the top, in the righthand corner I found Walter Macindoe's land. It was purchased as a Conditional Purchase in August 1908 and was 300 acres, 1 rood, excluding the road running through it. It was north of the village of Deer Vale, so I looked up Deer Vale in Google Maps, and found it west of Dorrigo. North of Deer Vale I found a road named "McIndoes Road" leading up to the land he owned - no need to guess who that was named after!