John Oxley Monument

At the base of Mullaley Mountain beside the Black Stump Way (Mullaley to Tambar Springs and Coolah Road), the John Oxley Monument pays tribute to explorer Oxley’s traversing the Gunnedah district and his naming of the Liverpool Plains – a vast area of black soil to the east and southeast of Mullaley.

On August 27, 1818, he and his party crossed Bowen’s Rivulet (now Cox’s Creek) approximately three kilometres southwest of where the monument is located and by mid-October they reached the mouth of the Hastings River and named Port Macquarie. They named the Liverpool Plains after the then Prime Minister of England (1770-1828) Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.