The first people to live in the area were the Wiradjuri people. The first European explorer, George Wilson Evans, came into the Lachlan Valley in 1815. He named the area the Oxley Plains after his boss, the Surveyor-General, John Oxley. In 1817 he said the area was "unfit for white settlement". An army camp was set up soon after at Soldiers Flat near present-day Billimari. Arthur Ranken and James Sloan, from Bathurst, were amongst the first European settlers on the Lachlan. They moved to the area in 1831.