Ulmarra

Postcode: 2462

Ulmarra is a small town in the Clarence Valley district of New South Wales, Australia. It had the distinction of being the smallest Local Government Area in NSW until 2000 when it amalgamated with the Nymboida Shire Council to form Pristine Waters Council, which later merged with Grafton and Maclean Shires to become the Clarence Valley Shire Council. The town had a population of 488 in 2001.

It is one of those towns you could pass through and think you had missed nothing. The Pacific Highway manages to miss the best part of the town by a block and it leaves the hasty traveller with the impression of a tiny, uninteresting settlement. In fact, if the traveller turns into River St or Coldstream St, the buildings and setting create a fine impression which is redolent of the town's past as a 19th-century river port.

So convincing is the authenticity of the buildings that the Commercial Hotel was used in the television series 'Fields of Fire' as a 1929 Queensland pub. It was neither built in 1929 nor in Queensland - but who cares about such details.

Ulmarra was established when Thomas Small bought the land in 1857. Small's family had been timbercutters but he tried his luck firstly with general farming - they grew maize - and later (around 1865) with sugar cane. By 1871 it had a population of nearly 1000 people. Sugarcane failed and eventually dairy farming started to dominate. It was as a result of this that the town developed as an important river port.

By 1900 Ulmarra was a thriving town with four blacksmiths, a bacon works, an abattoir, a hospital, two schools and three policemen.

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