Who named the namoi river?

Answer 1

Namoi River(placename). Muruwari: Nhamayi; Kamilaroi Ngamaay.

Ridley said that this placename may be based on the 'ngamai tree (a variety of the acacia)' or ngamu (breast) because the river is curved like a woman's breast (see also Appleton 1992; A.E. Martin). In the 1840s it was spelt Nammoy (e.g. Wells 1848). This was the way that the explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell had clearly spelt it.

Coincidentally, the botanist-explorer Allan Cunningham had named this river 'Mitchell' in 1827 in honour of James Mitchell (1792-1869), a surgeon and industrialist in Sydney. In 1827 James Mitchell had made barometrical observations for Cunningham and in gratitude the explorer named what is now known as the Namoi River after him. James Mitchell was dismissed from Government Service because he refused to attend the flogging of a convict at Hyde Park barracks on 14 September, 1837.

In 1831, Sir Thomas Mitchell (not to be confused with James) explored and mapped the Namoi River from his base at Tamworth all the way to Narrabri. During his expedition, Sir Thomas Mitchell first sighted the "Nammoy" on December 15, 1831. As Mitchell writes in his Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia (1839) his search for the river had originated "in one of those fabulous tales, which occasionally become current in the colony of New South Wales, respecting the interior country, still unexplored. A runaway convict, named George Clarke, alias "the Barber," had, for a length of time, escaped the vigilance of the police, by disguising himself as an aboriginal.... After this man was taken into custody, he gave a circumstantial detail of his travels to the north-west, along the bank of a large river, named, as he said, the "Kindur"; by following which in a south-west direction, he had twice reached the sea shore. He described the tribes inhabiting the banks of the "Kindur" and gave the names of their chiefs. He said that he had first crossed vast plains named "Balyran", and, on approaching the sea, he had seen a burning mountain named "Courada". He described, with great apparent accuracy, the courses of the known streams of the northern interior, which united, as he stated, in the " Nammoy," a river first mentioned by him; and, according to his testimony, Peel's river entered the "Nammoy", by flowing westward from where Mr. Oxley had crossed it."