EUMALGA. DUBBO, NSW

[Stanley]

EUMALGA. DUBBO

EUMALGA

Dubbo owes its existence to a Frenchman, jean Emile de Bouillon Serisier, the first businessman to settle in the area, and the driving force behind the move to create a village.

Serisier was born in Bordeaux in 1824 and at the age of sixteen went to Cuba to attend his sister's wedding. Three years later he was returning to France by an indirect route via Australia when he was stricken with appendicitis and put ashore at Sydney. The ship sailed on without him and when he had recovered, the young Serisier joined the Sydney-based French trading firm of Fesq & Despointes. In 1847 the firm sent him to Wellington to open up a trading post, but he saw better opportunities further west and travelled down the McQuarrie River, establishing a store on Dusty Bob's paddock, now McQuarrie Street South. Realising that he had no secure tenure over the land, Serisier in 1848 organised a successful petition among residents of the district to seek the establishment of a village and the sale of allotments. On 23 August 1849 the village of Dubbo was proclaimed.

Serisier's business prospered. He built two more stores and became a leading property-owner in the district. In 1858 he married and ten years later he purchased Eumalga, a leading district property on the Old Dubbo Road. There
he built a fine homestead and established an outstanding vineyard, at one time the second largest in New South Wales.

In 1879 Serisier decided to pay a long overdue visit to his native land, taking with him fifteen-year-old Hippolyte, one of his nine children. On the voyage Serisier contracted smallpox and died in Paris, on 10 February 1880.

[extracted from ‘Dubbo Sketchbook’ by Bill Hornadge. Page 6.]