Manilla
Medium-sized service town at the junction of the Namoi
and Manilla Rivers.
Manilla is a service centre to a rich wheat-growing, wool,
mixed farming and fat livestock district, at the junction of
the Namoi and Manilla Rivers. It is situated 44 km north of
Tamworth on the Fossickers Way and 456 km north of Sydney.
Manilla has a population of 2110 people and is 363 m above
sea-level on the North-West Slopes of NSW.
Once occupied by the Kamilaroi Aborigines, the Baldwins
of Singleton were the first squatters, occupying land about
10 km south 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, thereby
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. This kind of inundation has proved a
periodic problem, down to the 1970s.
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 especially the wheat
industries.
The boom years of 1894-1900 saw 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 Barabba 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 Veness's 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 to again
rob the mail coach later that year.
The national paragliding and hang-gliding championships
are held at Manilla each year. The annual vintage machinery
display occurs on the June long weekend, the Festival of
Spring Flowers in October and the Choral and Cod Festival in
September.
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Manilla
