Sawtell

Sawtell is a coastal village near Coffs Harbour in northern New South Wales, Australia.

Sawtell is a coastal village near Coffs Harbour in northern New South Wales, Australia.

In 1863, a cutter carrying a load of cedar logs ran aground on what would become Sawtell Beach. A Coffs Harbour farmer named Walter Harvey assembled a team of workers to salvage the logs, and a small settlement developed near the site of the wreck.Forty years later, the land around Sawtell Beach was purchased and subdivided by Oswald Sawtell for housing and farmland. Sawtell railway station, post office, school and hotel followed soon thereafter and by the 1930s Sawtell had become a thriving coastal village.

The original inhabitants of the land were Aborigines of the Gumbaynggirr clan. The Aboriginal name for the land where the town now stands was Bongil Bongil.