Stepping Back in Times || a look back at Killala, later known as Calala

The original homestead of Charles Hall, the original Australian Agricultural Company Superintendent, built in 1834 after the company had brought 6000 sheep from Port Stephens to Warrah, west of today's Willow Tree, thence to its Peel River settlement.

This was virtually the start of European Tamworth, and it would have been the first substantial building in our locality, with various largely convict worker huts nearby, extending through into today's Ebsworth Street.

The building's location is now marked by an engraved plinth, 50m inside the fence at the far end of Graham Street in Calala, where a new housing subdivision is being developed.

The building served as the headquarters for the AA Company for 7 years, until its centre of operations moved to "Goonoo Goonoo" Station.

An earlier European presence from 1830 was that of squatter Joseph Brown, who had his residence "Wallamoul" a few kilometres downstream on the Peel River, but was later forced off by the AA Company land-grant west of the river.

Probably one of the first of the local Gomeroi tribal group with which the AA Company negotiated was "King Peter/Peel's River", this title appearing on an existing brass gorget, which was worn around his neck as a European acknowledgement of tribal influence.

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