History
When explorer John Oxley passed through in 1818, he declared: "It would be impossible to find a finer or more luxuriant country . . . no place can afford more advantages to the industrious settler".
Tamworth
Tamworth is a picturesque and vibrant regional city about 500km north of Sydney and 600km south of Brisbane. It is home to almost 36,000 people. The city covers 184 sq km and is home to nearly 36,000 people.
Settlement started in 1834 after the Australian Agricultural Company took up more than 127,000 hectares (313,298 acres) on the western side of the Peel River with 6000 sheep. Other settlers gradually built up a town on the eastern side of the river.
Tamworth - named after Sir Robert Peel's electorate of Tamworth in Staffordshire, England - was declared a town in 1850.
The discovery of gold at Hanging Rock in 1851 brought even more settlers to the area.
Tamworth became a borough in 1876. Its first mayor was Philip Gidley King, who was superintendent of the Australian Agricultural Company's Peel River Land and Mineral Company which had its headquarters at Goonoo Goonoo Station. King built a small town residence which is now part of Calala Cottage Museum in Denison Street, Tamworth. The museum houses a range of exhibits telling the story of Tamworth's past.
The railway came to Tamworth in 1878, gas was introduced in 1881, and the town became the first in the southern hemisphere to have electric street lighting in 1888. Water supplies were firstly from wells on the Peel River. Dungowan Dam was built in 1957 followed by Chaffey Dam in 1979. Over the years droughts and floods have affected the Peel Valley, but the resilience of the region's population has always overcome these natural adversities.
Tamworth was the first town in Australia to light its streets by electricity. The Tamworth PowerStation Museum tells the story of the city's role in the development of electric street lighting, from the early days of oil lamps in 1876 and gas lamps in 1882 through to the installation of the first electric lights in November, 1888. The museum has one of the nation's largest collections of early 20th century electrical appliances.
Proclaimed a city in 1946, Tamworth was built on the wealth of agriculture. Today, among its many facets, the Tamworth region has a thriving industrial area, a regional training hospital, a Conservatorium of Music, and a flight training college at its busy airport. Each January, Tamworth hosts the world renowned Country Music Festival, one of the largest of its kind in the world.
Nundle
Nundle is a former gold mining town located some 400 km north of Sydney via the New England Highway. It is situated between the towering slopes of the Great Dividing Range and the Peel River offering spectacular scenic vistas.
Discovery of gold in 1851 at nearby Swamp Creek led to a flood of prospectors from California, Jamaica, Europe and China to set up camp along the Peel River and up the mountain slopes. By 1865 the population was about 500 with around 50 businesses in operation and it was declared a town in 1885.
The ruins of old mine workings and equipment lie scattered about the valley floor and up the mountainsides.
Traces of gold are still found, along with a variety of gemstones, and people continue to pan on the Peel River or fossick in the Hanging Rock area.
With Peel River and Chaffey Dam nearby, the area is also popular with anglers.
Manilla
Manilla’s first squatters were the Baldwins of Singleton, occupying land about 10 km south of the present day town in the late 1820s. The family took up the Dinnawirindi station in 1837. It was one of six cattle stations which swallowed up all of the local land.
In 1853 George Veness selected a property at the confluence of the Namoi and Manilla rivers, capitalising on what was then a teamsters campsite known as The Junction. He built a wine shop, a store and a residence and later became the first postmaster. Veness was asked by the postal department to choose a title for the village and named it after the Manilla River which had originally been called the Manellae, either a reference to the tribe which hunted its banks or a Kamilaroi term meaning winding river. It is said an ex-sailor familiar with Manilla in the Philippines instigated the change.
The town was laid out in the early 1860s by Arthur Dewhurst and he named its streets after himself, his wife, their English home towns, his chain man and his employer. It was gazetted in 1863 although a major flood the following year swept away a number of buildings and killed four of the twelve residents.
In 1866 Manilla was described by the NSW Gazetteer as a postal town in a pastoral and quartz mining district. There was a hotel, an inn and a district population of 50. However, over the next 35 years there was considerable development and population growth facilitated by closer settlement after the passing of the Robertson Land Act, the construction of a bridge over the Namoi River, the coming of the railway to Tamworth in 1878 and to Manilla in 1899, and the development of the wool and wheat industries.
The boom years of 1894-1900 recorded a spurt of building, although a series of fires the following decade destroyed many structures. Manilla became a municipality in 1901, at which time the population was 888. Tobacco was commercially grown in the early years of the twentieth century.
Bushranger Thunderbolt (alias Fred Ward) began a regular association with Manilla in 1865, taking two horses from Lloyd's station and committing a series of robberies on the Barraba road. In 1867 he bailed up the Tamworth mail 3 km from Manilla. He then proceeded to Hill's public house where he partook of refreshments. At the Veness store and hotel he robbed everyone, pilfering clothes, spirits and groceries. The police arrived and he fled without his pack horse which carried some of his gains. He returned later that year to rob the mail coach.
Barraba
The Barraba area was occupied by the Kamilaroi people before white settlement.
In 1827 Allan Cunningham crossed the Manilla River. Cunningham Memorial, a roadside obelisk 7 km west of the town, is the nearest that he came to where Barraba is today.
Barraba Station was taken up in 1838. Its name is derived from an Aboriginal term, said to mean ``camp by the riverbank''. In the mid-1840s Scotsman John McKid opened the first store on the future town site which was surveyed in 1852.
Later in the decade gold was discovered in the area at Woodsreef, Ironbark Creek and Crow Mountain. Woods Reef became a vital village at this time but virtually disappeared when the gold was exhausted. In 1861 the first school was opened at Barraba in rented premises. A post office was built in 1866, at which time the population was 80. The first Anglican church was erected in 1874-75 and the first bank, the Commercial Banking Company (CBC), was established in 1876.
Another boom period developed when copper was discovered at Gulf Creek in 1889. The first mine was established in 1892. At its peak in 1901, 200 men were employed in conjunction with the copper mine which was one of the largest in the state. A prosperous village developed with bark-hut residences, stores, a school, a hotel and a post office. However, the last major company pulled out in 1911 although the mine continued on for some years with a handful of employees. The school eventually closed in 1957 and the post office in 1965. All that remains today are the old school (built in 1896) and a poppet head.
Barraba became a municipality in 1906 and the railway arrived from Manilla in 1908, although it has long since closed down with the tracks removed from town. Diatomite mining began north of Barraba in 1982. The area is also rich in chromite, fireclays, gold, limestone, magnesite, copper, chalk and quartz.
The New England North West region of NSW is the traditional land of the Kamilaroi Nation and is settled with people from the Gomilori, Anaiwan, Bigambul, Ngarabal, Gunn-e-dar, Wiradjarai, Marbul, Thungutti, Kwiambal and Banbil and Bunjalung tribes.
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