Wilcannia
Historic port on the Darling River
The image of Wilcannia that most travellers along the Barrier Highway have is of a town with a lot of Aborigines standing around in the main street. It is a very racist preconception but one which nearly everyone who has travelled through the town enunciates. It is also fuelled by the bigots of Broken Hill and Cobar who are only too eager to divert travellers to their own centres.

Of course the image of the town is unfair and inaccurate. Sadly very few travellers get out of their cars, have a look around this historic town and talk to the local Aborigines, who are, almost without exception, very friendly and only too happy to talk about this delightful township on the banks of the Darling River. After all many of them are Barkindji people who have been living in this region for 40 000 years.

Wilcannia is located 965 km northwest of Sydney via the Great Western, Mitchell and Barrier Highways. In spite of the distance from the sea, it is only 78 m above sea-level. Situated on marginal land it experiences an average rainfall of 252 mm per annum.

The first European in the area was Major Thomas Mitchell who moved down the Darling from Bourke to what is now Menindee in 1835. Mitchell had a major confrontation with the local Aborigines near present-day Wilcannia during which time he killed at least two people.

The settlement of the area by Victorian pastoralists began in the 1850s and by 27 January 1859 a steamer, the Albury, had made its way up the river and reached the current site of Wilcannia which was known at the time as Mount Murchison Station. Mount Murchison had been named by Mitchell.

 

Henry Lawson's 'Great Grey Plain' between Menindee and Wilcannia

 

Wilcannia (the name reputedly meant 'a gap in the bank where the flood waters escape' in the language of the local Aborigines) was proclaimed in June 1866 and was incorporated as a municipality in 1881.

The township reached its height in the 1880s when it boasted 13 hotels, a population of 3000, and a local newspaper - the Wilcannia Times. In 1879 the Red Lion brewery (it is no longer standing) was built at the northern end of Reid Street. Its great claim to fame was that it was the first brewery which the famous beer baron Edmund Resch built in Australia.

At this time Wilcannia became the third-largest port on the Darling River. In 1887, for example, 222 steamers stopped there. Known as 'Queen City of the West' there was a time when most of the wool from northwestern NSW passed through the port. The town was also at the centre of a number of coach routes which traversed Western NSW. Some of the coaches were built here.

The discovery of gold at Mt Browne (see entries on Milparinka and Tibooburra) saw through-traffic and trade increase in the short term but the development of Silverton and Broken Hill saw the centre of trade shift. When the opal fields of White Cliffs were discovered in the 1890s trade increased again as Wilcannia became the central supply depot for the opal miners and the major recipient of their revenue. Eventually, as road and rail traffic killed the steamer trade the town's importance declined.

In 1892 Wilcannia was hit with a rabbit plague so severe that a man was supposedly employed to remove the rabbits from the streets which had been killed by children on their way to school. By the 1920s, with the arrival of reliable road transport, the town began to decline.

Things to see:  

Historic Wilcannia
Historic Wilcannia is a reminder that often first impressions are very wrong. It is possible to pass through the town and completely miss its fine repository of interesting and historical buildings, often built of locally-quarried sandstone. The visitors' centre can furnish you with a pamphlet which will lead you around the town's heritage trail: 18 sites with informative signposts that connect physical locations with their historic significance. A book is also for sale which provides a more comprehensive account of the sites. There are two other signposted locations in Tilpa, 124 km north-east of Wilcannia.

 

The old centre-lift bridge across the Darling River

 

If you head south down Myers St to the river¹s edge you will get an excellent view of the old centre­lift bridge which was built in 1896 and is now classified by the National Trust. It replaced a punt which was capable of moving 4000 sheep a day across the river. The wharf, dating from the 1870s, can be seen from the bridge.

Turn south into Reid Street just near the bridge and you will notice the beautiful 1880 post office and its attached residence which continue to serve the local community. The Club Hotel on the other side of Reid St dates from 1879 and is built on the site of the town¹s first hotel which burnt down. On the other side of the highway is the Knox and Downs Store (1899) and, further east along Reid St, on the river-side of the road, is the Athenaeum Library (1883) now the town's Pioneer Museum. It is well worth a visit if only to purchase the excellent Wilcannia Historical Society Guide Book which provides detailed histories of all the town¹s major buildings.

Continue east along Reid St over Byrne St and, to the right, is the London Bank building (1890) now used as the Central Darling Shire Offices.

Now head west along Reid St, back across Myers St. At the Cleaton St intersection is the Court House Hotel (1879) and, just beyond it, the old warehouse (1878) which backed onto the river. Across the road is the impressive courthouse (1880), which is next to the old maximum security prison, now the police station (1881), and the police residence (1880), all built of locally quarried sandstone and designed by James Barnet.

The Wilcannia courthouse (1880) was the scene of one of the most unusual literary arguments ever witnessed in Australia. On 25 April 1885 the court heard a case which involved cruelty to animals. One of the police magistrates was Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, the son of Charles Dickens, and one of the prosecution witnesses was Frederick James Anthony Trollope, the son of the novelist Anthony Trollope. Edward had managed Mt Murchison Station from 1876 to 1881. He was later elected to the NSW parliament.

 

The Wilcannia Athenaeum

 

Head north along Cleaton St and at the corner with Hood St is one of the town's oldest buildings, Wilcannia Central School which is a delightful example of the old (the original school building was completed in 1874) and the new with a great acknowledgement of the large part played by Aborigines in the life of the town. The murals on the side of the school (they can be seen from the main gate in Hood Street) have been designed to show Aboriginal students that the school is not some kind of white, alien environment.

 

Wilcannia Post Office

 

Return along Cleaton St and turn left into Woore St. At the corner of Myers St and Woore St is St James Church of England (1883) and further east along Woore St is the Roman Catholic Convent (1894), now a private residence.

Remember, many of the local roads are gravel and can be hazardous or impassable after wet weather. Phone (08) 8091 5155 for an up-to-date report on their condition.

 

 

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Wilcannia