[3][4] The junction of the Manilla and Namoi Rivers known as 'Maneela', was for generations, a camping ground for the local Indigenous people, members of the large Kamilaroi (Gamilaraay) tribes of northwestern New South Wales.

Another skirmish occurred resulting in one of the surveying team being wounded by a spear and Florance shooting an Aboriginal man.

[5] In 1832, Henry Dangar and Sir William Edward Parry conducted further surveying for the Australian Agricultural Company and camped on what is now the present site of the Manilla township.

[6] Around 1836, British pastoral squatters arrived in the area looking to establish large sheep and cattle stations on so-called crown land for the small leasehold fee of £10 per annum.

[7][8] Conflict in the area between the colonists and the resident Aboriginal population resulted in the government sending a large detachment of New South Wales Mounted Police under the command of Major James Nunn to the region in early 1838.

Frontier conflict in the immediate vicinity appears to have ended after Nunn's operation, who proceeded north-west with his men, later perpetrating the Waterloo Creek massacre.

[8][9] During the 1850s, teamsters with bullock waggons were regularly transporting goods from the Hunter District through the Manilla area to outlying cattle stations and the northern goldfield settlements of Bingara and Bundarra.

In 1853, enterprising Englishman George Veness arrived at ‘The Junction’ to set up a store and wine shop at the teamsters’ camping ground.

In 1998 local paragliding instructor and developer of Mt Borah, Godfrey Wenness, gained the world distance record with a flight of 335 kilometres (208 mi).

In the week prior to the event Manilla was in the headlines around the world for the survival of paraglider pilot Ewa Wiśnierska of Germany who was sucked up into a thunderstorm to 9,946 metres (32,631 ft).