Tourandury was also part of a group of Aborigines who met with explorer Charles Sturt and helped him when his whale boat capsized on the nearby Murrumbidgee river.

In the mid-1860s the squatter James Tyson saw a business opportunity and built a hotel at a new township which was developing at a crossing-place over the river on his "Tupra" run.

A report in the Pastoral Times newspaper in November 1866 stated that "Mr. Tyson has built a brick hotel" which was to be opened shortly at the "new township of Oxley".

The report added: "There is not much traffic past the house, and very few men in the neighborhood, so the prospects of doing a good trade are not very encouraging".

In April 1870 at the Hay Police Court Daniel Murphy, "formerly of Maude", applied for a licence for the Oxley Hotel (which was subsequently granted).

In December 1870 George Carter was successful in his application for a licence for a second public-house at Oxley, called the Stockman's Hotel.

The writer reported that Delandre "with an eye to business, is constructing a pontoon bridge, which he intends laying across the river in front of his house".

[9] Just two years later another traveller who arrived at Oxley on the mail-coach described Delandre's pontoon-bridge as "a wretched apology for a bridge, in the shape of a pontoon, the condition of which seems to be verging upon the last stages of dissolution".

In 1882 there was a re-shuffle of publicans as Delandre left the Oxley Hotel to be replaced by William Westhead, and Daniel Murphy took over the licence of the Royal.