Tuncester lies on the traditional lands of the Bundjalung people, who inhabited the Richmond River area before European settlers arrived in the 1840s.
[1] In 1843 Augustus Adolphus Leycester[a] and Robert Shaw took up the pastoral lease over land which they called Tunstall, and created a cattle station.
[5] They had previously held a run called Maidenhead[2] on the Severn River in New England, and herded their cattle overland to Tunstall via Woodenbong and Urbenville.
The property was described in the New South Wales Government Gazette as covering an area of around 19,200 acres (7,800 ha), capable of grazing 1200 cattle.
There was a boundary dispute in 1847[5] with neighbour Alfred Ward Stephens, who lived on a property called Runnymede, with both men claiming "a large, fertile plain" between the two.
[5] He returned to New South Wales at some point, and in April 1859,[2] with the help of Aboriginal man Davy, claimed to have retrieved the first egg of a rare type of lyrebird, Menura alberti.
In 1873, Anton and Rosina Bibo and their three children arrived in Australia on the SS Great Britain, and settled in Tunstall (Tuncester), where they planted vineyards and made wine.
After the reserve was converted into an agricultural station run by white people in the 1920s, many residents began returning to the town camps, and Dunoon closed in 1929.
[22] After white townspeople objected to their presence in the town, in 1931 the government moved the Aboriginal people from the camps in North Lismore to a new reserve at Tuncester, around 7 km (4.3 mi) away.
[31] it was run by Frank Roberts (1899–1968), who had become an evangelical Christian under the United Aborigines Mission before moving from Cabbage Tree Island to Cubawee.
[32][33] In March 1939 it was reported that George Gollan, then Chief Secretary of New South Wales, wanted to close down the reserve owing to "rampant vice".
[34] In November 1939, the Aborigines Protection Board announced that it would not be building more homes at Tuncester Reserve owing to shortage of funds.
[23] In June 1950, Lismore police and public health officials, who supported Pastor Roberts, criticised the Aboriginal Protection Board for allowing the reserve to fall into neglect.
Roberts criticised the board for giving the people on the reserve the minimum assistance, and not providing sufficiently for the education of children.
He also wrote that the recent grant of an additional three acres was not given by the Welfare Board, but through the residents appealing to the Minister for Lands, and mentions a railway siding at the reserve.
The residents at Cubawee were eventually forced from their homes owing to flooding of the area in 1964, but the people later continued to try to get their land back.
[27][25] Frank Roberts Snr went on to serve on the Anglican Board of Missions from 1968 until 1974, and advocated for the rights of Aboriginal people at a meeting in Sydney in 1970.