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Bailey’s Creek or Cow Bay north of the Daintree

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Bailey’s Creek history

Bailey’s Creek is now called Cow Bay

1874

            The native police in the Platypus entered a creek ten miles north of the Daintree which they found ‘equally prolific in cedar and having splendid sugar land’  and named it Bailey Creek.

1883

          John Moffat of Irvinebank with partners George Young and James McLeod, selected 4,000 acres

          The Chinese were growing rice

          Kenneth Hutchison from Warwick never occupied his land although the creek bears his name.  His selection was forfeited in 1888.

1899

         May 8.  Bailey’s Creek School No. 1004 began on Mr J Doyle’s property.  Jerry Doyle was Moffat’s manager and it was under his house.  The teacher was shared with the Daintree School

1900

         April. Half time schools at Bailey’s Creek and Daintree closed due to resignation of the teacher, Mr P Keating, who had to row 16 miles between the schools, 4 of them in the open sea along the coast each week.

       The Mason brothers began a plantation Almason

1903

            31^st July.  Bailey’s creek school closed and was allocated to Osborne’s property on the Daintree River.

1907

          Moffat was forced to terminate some of his unprofitable ventures

1927  

          Andrew Arthur Mason first settled in Cow Bay (then known as Baileys Creek) and after a failed farming venture he moved to Cape Tribulation in 1932.

1934

            March 12.  A cyclone ruined the Almason banana crop.

1949

         Oct. After the birth of their third daughter Walter and Myrtle Mason moved back to Bailey Creek and attempted to grow rice on the bank of Hutchinson Creek. 

1978

         June.  The Nicholas family established the Cubbagudta tea plantation from seed from the Nerada plantation at Innisfail.

1985

         Jan.  The first harvest of Cubbagudta (aboriginal name for ‘rainy place’) tea

Compiled by Pam Willis Burden    March 2006

A more detailed time line history has been published as a Bulletin and is available for $2 plus postage from the Douglas Shire Historical Society.  Email