The West Maitland Council had long sought this outcome in order to hurry flood flows past the densely populated Bend and the commercial area of eastern High St (where access was cut in big floods), and it hired a contractor to make a 'cut' through the neck of the meander to bring the change of course about. The work had begun when the great flood of 1893 hit and completed the contractor's task.

In West Maitland the result was welcomed, the flood threat there would be reduced. But people downstream took a different view. In the Morpeth district (including Phoenix Park and Duckenfield) the idea of 'The Cut' was opposed because floodwaters would get away more quickly from West Maitland. Thus there would be higher flood levels downstream and worsened impacts by way of bank erosion and loss of farmland.

And there were. Five months after the 1893 flood, the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate editorialised on the topic. It noted that, thanks to The Cut, the flood had arrived in the Morpeth area "with greater velocity . . . the water higher than it otherwise would have been, [and] the banks along the Phoenix Park side were torn away."

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The paper continued: "The Morpeth people argue that if special provision is to be made to get the water safely past West Maitland it is only common sense to first strengthen the lower reaches of the river, so that floods can escape by a shorter route to the harbour at Newcastle."

That is, work should first be done to 'improve' the river's capacity to remove floodwater from the lower areas. Only later should such work be undertaken at West Maitland.

The lower areas had railed against similar Maitland proposals before. One suggestion had been to build a big 'canal' from Bolwarra to Largs to speed flood flows past the town. Another was for a canal from Louth Park via Howes Lagoon to Morpeth.

West Maitland's interest prevailed. The town's concerns outweighed those of the down-river farmers, who were in different council areas, and in any case the agricultural benefits of speedily removing floodwaters were frequently cited in West Maitland. The prevailing wisdom was that floodwaters needed to be drained quickly so farmland could be returned as soon as possible to production.

"The whole question", the paper went on, "is a most important one, and its solution is certainly not made more easy by departmental apathy and neglect." This was a hit at the Department of Public Works, which had conducted studies of the problems caused by floods but was not greatly involved in fixing them.

In the 1890s flood mitigation was not yet a cause that the colonial government had embraced. Action was left to farmers' co-operatives and shire and municipal councils, so the measures adopted tended to suit some localities and interests rather than others. A comprehensive, planned, region-wide approach was to wait until after another great flood the flood of 1955.