During the 1820s at Wallis Plains (the infant Maitland), the access route across the Hunter River was at 'The Falls', just above today's Belmore Bridge.
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Here there was gravel and sand on a flat, stable volcanic rock outcrop about three feet below river level at low tide. Bullock teams, coaches, horses and cattle could ford at low tide roughly between the intersection of Hannan and Sempill streets (on the Maitland side) and Melrose Street, Lorn.
People on foot struggled to get across, and there were accidents and drownings. A brother of Thomas McDougall, the owner of the estate on which Lorn is now located, built a small punt to ferry people across at The Falls. Propelled by a rope heaved on manually by the operator, this punt was the first of a string of such vessels that were eventually situated at several locations down the river to Newcastle.
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The next punt was at McDougall's Falls close to the end of Russell St, Horseshoe Bend, also built and operated by the McDougalls. It operated on a long chain instead of rope and lasted until the Belmore Bridge was opened in 1869.
Further downstream was the manually-operated Pitnacree punt, which operated until the Pitnacree Bridge was built in 1866. Then came the Largs punt which plied from Punt Rd (Largs) to the Queens Wharf Rd which ran to Morpeth.
At the Queens Wharf itself a punt operated across the river to Phoenix Park, from which overland access was possible to Largs and Wallalong and thence north to Paterson, Dungog and Clarence Town. The Paterson River had punts located between Woodville and Hinton and below the town of Paterson.
Immediately downstream of Morpeth was the Hinton punt, the first steam-driven punt on the Hunter, which crossed from Punt Rd (Hinton) to Old Punt Rd (Morpeth) from 1876 until the Hinton Bridge was opened in 1891. Then at Millers Forest a punt operated to Raymond Terrace until the Fitzgerald and Irrawang bridges were opened in 1965 and 1970 respectively. At first this punt was manually operated but later it was driven by steam and eventually by diesel.
The largest cable punt ever to operate on the Hunter was at Hexham. It began as a small manual craft, but as vehicular demand increased on the Pacific Highway it was replaced by a larger steam-driven unit and later by a diesel-driven one. The No 1 Hexham Bridge, completed in 1952, made it obsolete.
Further downstream again, on the South Arm of the Hunter, was the small Ash Island-Ferry Rd (Sandgate) punt which functioned until a bridge was built to the island at Hexham. On the North Arm another small punt connected Moscheto Island and the Ingall St (BHP) wharf at Mayfield East.
Then came Newcastle, where a very large punt operated the Stockton-Wharf Rd run. The original punt here was built by Peter Callan of Stockton in 1889 and towed by one of his ferries. Known as the 'Horse Punt', it served horse-drawn transport exclusively and functioned until the steam-driven 'Mildred' was launched at the Walsh Island Dockyard in 1916. Eventually, three large steam-driven ferries that could carry many vehicles (the Kooroongaba, the Koondooloo and the Lurgurena), replaced the Mildred. They operated until the Stockton Bridge opened in 1971.
Punts operated on the lower Hunter for about 150 years. Before bridges and ferries they were vital in serving the needs of their time.
