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| The North Bourke bridge
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Bourke (including Wanaaring)
Substantial township on the Darling River in far western
New South Wales.
Located 789 km north west of Sydney, Bourke is situated on
the Darling River 110 m above sea level. It is, by any
measure, a thriving country town with a population around
3500 and a sense of prosperity which is the result of its
geographic importance as the centre of a large wool, cotton
and citrus area.
The prosperity of the town belies the assessments of the
first Europeans who travelled through the area. When Charles
Sturt passed through the district in 1828 he thought that
the whole area was 'unlikely to become the haunt of
civilised man'. Sturt, accompanied by Hamilton Hume, reached
the Darling River (Sturt named the river after Sir Ralph
Darling, Governor of NSW at the time) about 30 km north of
the present town site and they followed the river downstream
for about 100 km. They had arrived in the area during a
period of drought and, although Sturt was to refer to the
Darling as that 'noble river' he was to stop travelling down
it because, at the time, it was saline and very low. He
returned to Sydney with less that glowing reports of the
area. Certainly he did nothing to encourage settlement.
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| A re-creation of the Old
Fort at the site of the original building
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It wasn't until 1835 that Sir Thomas Mitchell returned to
the area and constructed a fort about 13 km south of the
town site. Mitchell had bad relations with the local
Aborigines and he felt a fort was suitable protection
against their attacks. It was named Fort Bourke after the
governor of NSW, Sir Richard Bourke (1777-1855). Eventually
the district and later the town came to be known by this
name.
Fort Bourke was short-lived but it did establish the
possibility of settlement in the area and over the next
decade pastoralists (some of them speculators) moved into
the area. It was marginal land and few prospered. However
the history of the district changed dramatically when, in
1859, Captain W. R. Randall sailed the Gemini up the Darling
from South Australia. Suddenly Bourke and Brewarrina and
other centres along the river became vital transport nodes.
For decades Bourke was the transport centre for the whole of
south west Queensland and western NSW. Its port was the only
efficient way to transport wool to the coastal markets and
at its height in the late 1800s over 40 000 bales of wool
were being shipped down the Darling annually. The river
transport continued until the last commercial riverboat in
1931.
In 1862 the township was surveyed and the first
businesses - 'Bourke Store' and 'Bourke' Hotel - were
established. That same year, the town's first court case - a
bushranging charge - was conducted in the open air. This was
a boom time for the town with large landholdings being taken
up by optimistic graziers. The unreliability of the rainfall
- it averages 340 mm but is likely to vary from 150 mm one
year to 800 mm the next - forced many of the optimists out
of the area.
Things to see:
Historic Buildings
There is so much to see of historical interest in Bourke.
The town's history is genuinely interesting and the places
of historical importance have been well preserved. The
common sense first stop should be at the Tourist Information
Office in the 2WEB building in Oxley Street east of the
Police Station. The Tourist Information Office provides an
excellent brochure, complete with a detailed map, which
highlights the town's most interesting and important
buildings.
The most interesting buildings in Bourke include the
'Lands Building', now Government Offices, which was built
between 1863-1865 as the town's first Court House. It served
the town for only a decade before the second court house was
built in 1875. Today the first Court House has been
beautifully restored and is one of the most attractive
buildings in the town. It is located in Mitchell Street one
block west of Richard Street.
One of the town's most impressive buildings, and
certainly one of the most photographed, is the Court House
at 51 Oxley Street which was built in 1899 - a true
Federation building. The Court itself, which is open for
inspection, is beautifully preserved and has an appropriate
air of solemnity. This Court House must be one of the first
'project' court houses in the country as it is almost
identical to the Wagga Court House which the architect,
Walter Vernon, designed at the same time.
A little further down Oxley Street (the main street of
town) is the Post Office which was built in 1879 with the
upper floor being added some years later. It survived the
1890 flood (the town's worst flood when the river broke its
banks and the levees which had been built) by building its
own levee bank.
Much is made of the Carriers Arms Hotel (on the Mitchell
Highway two blocks from Richard Street) in which Henry
Lawson reputedly wrote some stories and which was a popular
Cobb & Co stopoff point. Built in 1879, the building is now
singularly unimpressive. When compared to the large number
of old and interesting buildings in town it is a great
disappointment.
Afghan Mosque/Bourke Cemetery
Bourke Cemetery has the graves of several Afghan camel
drivers, as well as the corrugated-iron shack they used as a
mosque. The local camel drivers once stationed over 2000
camels at a site just south of the town's present
showgrounds.
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| The Bourke Weir
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The Bourke Weir
The Bourke Weir (it can be reached by driving west along
Anson Street and following the signs) was opened in 1897 and
was designed to maintain a reasonable level of water in the
river near the town. The lock was nearly 60 metres long and
11 metres wide and was the only one built on the Darling. It
was concreted and converted into a weir in 1941.
Just upstream at the Paddlewheel Carapark - tel: (02)
6872 2277 - boats can be hired for short trips on the river.
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| Grave of an Afghan camel
driver in Bourke cemetery |
Mud Map Tours
The Mud Map Tours, a brochure which is freely available
around the town, offers a number of suggested tours around
the area. Of all these the short journey out to Fort Bourke
Stockade is probably the most interesting. On the way out to
the stockade stop at the cemetery (the section closest to
town is the oldest) where there are a number of graves of
Afghan camel drivers. They are easy to identify because,
unlike the Christian graves, they are all pointing towards
Mecca. About 50 metres further across is the grave of John
McCabe, a local policeman who was shot by bushranger Captain
Starlight in 1868. The highwayman was captured nearly three
months later and held in Bourke where he was charged before
being tried in Bathurst (see
Enngonia for further details).
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| Part of the wildlife
refuge on the way to Fort Bourke
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Fort Bourke Stockade
Ironically the trip out to Fort Bourke Stockade is actually
more interesting than the reconstructed Stockade. About 15
km out of town the road passes around a wildlife refuge
which is extraordinarily beautiful. The actual fort itself
is nothing more than a few logs in the middle of nowhere.
The argument, which is true, is that there is no accurate
information about what Mitchell's stockade looked like but
it is reasonable to assume that it looked nothing like this
re-creation which would barely hold a single man for half an
hour and certainly wouldn't have deterred the 'hostile
natives' that Mitchell was so afraid of.
There are seven mud maps in the brochure with trips
around the town which range from fishing to wildflowers and
a trip out through the cotton growing areas. The map
relating to Midnight's Grave is inaccurate (see
Enngonia).
Wanaaring
Located on the banks of the Paroo River,195 km north-west of
Bourke, Wanaaring was established in the 1880s as a service
centre to the surrounding stations, which it remains today.
Yellowbelly and yabbies can be caught in the river and it is
possible to visit a local bee farm. There is also a modest
local golf course, along with a hotel/motel, a general store
and a campsite.
Cobb & Co Heritage Trail
The historic inland coaching company, Cobb & Co, celebrates
the 150th anniversary of its first journey in 2004 (and the
80th anniversary of its last, owing to the emergence of
motorised transport). The trailblazing company's
contribution to Australia's development is celebrated with
the establishment of a heritage trail which explores the
terrain covered on one of its old routes: between Bathurst
and Bourke.
Cobb & Co's origins lay in the growing human traffic
prompted by the goldrushes of the early 1850s. As the
Heritage Trail website states: 'The company was enormously
successful and had branches or franchises throughout much of
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Japan. At its peak,
Cobb & Co operated along a network of tracks that extended
further than those of any other coach system in the world
its coaches travelled 28,000 miles (44,800km) per week and
6000 (out of their 30,000) horses were harnessed every day.
Cobb & Co created a web of tracks from Normanton on the Gulf
of Carpentaria and Port Douglas on the Coral Sea down to the
furthest reaches of Victoria and South Australia in all, a
continuous line of 2000 miles (3200km) of track over eastern
Australia from south to north, with a total of 7000 miles
(11,200km) of regular routes' (see www.cobbandco.net.au).
As a major terminus on the coach line, Bourke has many
Cobb & Co sites. These include the blacksmith's workshop and
residence in Oxley St, which are largely unchanged. The
workshop still bears the soot of its working days and a
19th-century grapevine can be seen by the house. The
Carriers Arms Hotel (1879) was once a booking office for the
coach service to Hungerford and Queensland and the old
company foreman's residence can still be found in Hope St.
Other extant buildings thought to be connected to Cobb & Co
are the Fitzgerald Hotel (1888) in Oxley St, the post office
(1879), the Telegraph Hotel (now the Riverside Motel) and
Bourke Cemetery. Other Cobb & Co related buildings have
disappeared, such as Richardson & Bennett's wagon and coach
factory, which became the Cobb & Co stables, Sam Doughty's
livery stable, the City Coach & Buggy Works, and the Steam
Coach and Wagon Factory.
Furrther afield are such sites as the remains of the Dry
Lake Hotel, the Warrego Pub (built on the site of the Salmon
Ford Pub, which was once a Cobb & Co change station), Mount
Oxley, where there was once a changing station (and where it
is now possible to camp with a key and permit from the
Bourke Information Centre), the North Bourke Billabong,
where distinguished coach driver, Billy Armstrong, died
after overturning his coach, the North Bourke Bridge (the
second lift bridge in NSW), the ruins of the old changing
station at Curraweena, the former site of the Pink Hills
Pub, Wanaaring (which once received a Cobb & Co coach each
week), Wangamanna Station, where Cobb & Co once obtained
camels to pull their coaches during a drought, and
Yantabulla changing station.
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Bourke
