I've driven through Gilgandra more times than I can count on the way up the Newell, and like most Sydneysiders I used to think of it as the place you stop for a pie and fuel before the Warrumbungles. That's selling it short. This little town on a big bend of the Castlereagh River gave Australia the Coo-ee March of 1915, it was once so full of windmills that people called it the town of windmills, and its story runs back thousands of years before any of that. Here's what I found when I went digging.
Where Gilgandra Sits
Gilgandra is in the Orana region of New South Wales, about 432 km north-west of Sydney, or roughly six hours in the car. The Newell, Oxley and Castlereagh highways all meet here, and Wikipedia makes the point that the town is about halfway along the inland run between Melbourne and Brisbane. It's the seat of Gilgandra Shire, and the country around it grows wheat and other cereal crops and runs sheep and beef cattle.
Aboriginal Country and the Long Waterhole
Whose country is it? The honest answer is that Gilgandra sits where several nations meet, and the sources word it a little differently. The Gilgandra Region tourism site says the traditional custodians describe Gilgandra as a meeting place between the Wiradjuri, Kamilaroi and Wailwan nations. Wikipedia's Gilgandra article names three language groups, the Gamilaraay, Wiradjuri and Wayilwan (Kamilaroi and Gamilaraay are two spellings of the same name, and so are Wailwan and Wayilwan).
The Wikipedia article on the Castlereagh River goes a step further. It says the river's upper reaches around Mendooran and Gilgandra run through the northern end of Wiradjuri country, that the Warrumbungles end of the river was on the western edge of Gamilaraay country, and that past Gilgandra the river flows into Wailwan country. It also quotes an old European observation that at the long waterhole at Gilgandra the "Coonabarabran" tribe of the Gamilaraay camped on the eastern side of the river and the Mole tribe of the Wiradjuri on the western side. So it's not one or the other. It's both, and Wailwan as well.
The same article says people have lived to the east of Gilgandra for at least 25,000 years, and in the Warrumbungle Ranges, about 70 km to the north, for about 17,000 years, going on archaeological evidence cited in the Warrumbungle National Park guidebook.
What the Name Means
Both Wikipedia and the Gilgandra Region site say Gilgandra means "long waterhole" (the tourism site writes it as "long water hole"). The Castlereagh is a funny river. Its wide sandy bed is often dry or down to a trickle, but near where the town grew up there was a big permanent waterhole, about 100 yards (91 m) long and 12 feet (3.7 m) deep. That waterhole gave the place its name.
Oxley, Evans and the Castlereagh in 1818
The first Europeans to see the Castlereagh were in Surveyor-General John Oxley's party of 1818. Oxley had left Bathurst in May that year to follow the Macquarie River. When the Macquarie ran out into the marshes, he sent his assistant George Evans ahead from Mount Harris on 8 July to scout a route to the north-east. Evans crossed the Castlereagh around Combara, between Gulargambone and Coonamble, then swung back and hit the river again between where Armatree and Curban are today.
Evans got back to camp on 18 July 1818, and that same day Oxley named the river after Lord Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary. The whole party reached the river on 27 July and found it in flood. They couldn't get across until 2 August. While he waited near present-day Coonamble, Oxley wrote that the "Natives appear to be numerous; their guniahs (or bark-huts) are in every direction". So Oxley never stood on the site of Gilgandra itself. His crossings were downstream, but his journey put the Castlereagh on the map for the pastoralists who followed.
The Squatters Move In
From the 1830s, squatters started pushing cattle north-west from around Mudgee onto the Castlereagh, usually with convicts or ex-convicts minding the stock. It was outside the official limits of settlement, so strictly speaking they were taking the land for nothing. In 1836 the government gave up trying to stop it, and brought in pastoral licences with a fee and a 16,000-acre cap on each run.
According to the Castlereagh River article, Europeans were on the river by early 1832, when Robert Lowe of Mudgee sent cattle to a run called "Yalcogrin" between Gilgandra and Curban. When squatting was made legal in 1836 there was a rush of licence applications for runs with names you still hear in the district: Richard Rouse for Mundooran and Breelong, Thomas Perrie for Eringanerin, James Bennett at Bearbong, and Robert Lowe for Carlganda. Robert Bennett took up "Kirban", which became the Curban area, in about 1839.
For a long time Gilgandra itself was just a spot on the river. The Castlereagh article says it hadn't grown much before its bridge was built in 1878, and that Mendooran and Coonamble were the bigger places.
From River Crossing to Town
The Gilgandra Wikipedia article sets out the early milestones. The post office was formally set up in 1867, a school opened in 1881, and the first hearings were held in the courthouse in 1884. The town was proclaimed in 1888 and the first town blocks were sold in 1889. Gilgandra Shire was constituted in 1906.
One name keeps coming up in those early years. Hannah Morris (1829–1911) lived in the area from 1852, ran an inn, owned land and, in Wikipedia's words, was a "driving figure in establishing Gilgandra township". In the great flood of 1874 she helped an Aboriginal woman and her young son get away from their camp on the riverbank as the water rose around them.
The Railway Arrives
The railway came up from Dubbo on the Coonamble branch line, which branches off the Main West Line at Dubbo. NSWrail.net gives the opening date of Gilgandra station as 18 February 1903, and Wikipedia says the line opened in 1903 and carried passengers until the 1970s. Gilgandra was a big stop on the line, with a 73 m platform, a goods shed, a grain shed, a jib crane, a silo and stockyards, plus a turning triangle with a coal stage. The station closed in 1990, but the line still carries goods, mostly grain. A NSW Government project finished in 2017 restored the track with new steel sleepers and new bridges.
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Breelong, 1900: Jimmy Governor
I've written the full story of this in a separate post (see My Earlier Posts below), so here's just the short version. Jimmy Governor was born in about 1875 on the Talbragar River. In 1900 he took a fencing contract with John Mawbey at Breelong, on Wallumburrawang Creek where it meets the Castlereagh, about ten miles south-east of Gilgandra. On the night of 20 July 1900, after weeks of bad blood with the Mawbeys, Jimmy Governor and Jack Underwood killed four members of the Mawbey family and the schoolteacher Ellen Kerz.
Underwood was caught soon after. Jimmy and his brother Joe went bush for fourteen weeks and killed more people along the way. They were proclaimed outlaws on 23 October 1900, the last people ever declared outlaws in New South Wales. Jimmy was captured near Wingham. Joe was shot dead north of Singleton. Underwood was hanged at Dubbo Gaol on 14 January 1901, and Jimmy Governor was hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 18 January 1901. Thomas Keneally later used the story for his 1972 novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.
The Windmill Town and the Hitchen Brothers
Gilgandra sits over the Great Artesian Basin, in the Surat Sub-basin to be exact. Sink a bore and you hit good drinkable water, and a windmill would bring it to the surface and into a tank. Windmills were already being advertised in the first Gilgandra newspapers in 1905, and from the early 1900s people called Gilgandra the town of windmills.
One of the men selling and putting them up was a plumber called Bill Hitchen. The Australian War Memorial's Last Post Ceremony story tells us William Thomas Hitchen was born at Mudgee in 1864, the son of George Hitchen, who'd come out from Lanarkshire in Scotland for the gold, and his wife Catherine. George later ran hotels at Tooraweenah, Collie and Peak. Bill became a master plumber, married Emma Jane Lyons at Coonamble in 1890, and in 1906 moved the family to Gilgandra from Gulargambone. He set up as a plumber and windmill expert, and he and two of his sons put up many of the windmills in and around town.
How many windmills? The Gilgandra Region site says there were over 300 pumping water by the 1950s. Wikipedia says it was reported in 1948 that there were over 300. Then in 1966 the town got a reticulated water supply, "town water", and the windmills slowly came down. These days the council draws water from a network of nine artesian bores, and Wikipedia says that in 2016 Gilgandra had the largest single annual licensed entitlement to Great Artesian Basin water of any council in New South Wales, at 2,020 megalitres.
The Coo-ee March of 1915
By the middle of 1915, Gallipoli had hit home and the flood of volunteers had slowed to a trickle. Bill Hitchen was too old to enlist when war broke out, but the falling numbers ate at him. The AWM says he was a strong supporter of conscription. As captain of the Gilgandra Rifle Club he came up with an idea: march from Gilgandra to Sydney, and in every town on the way hold a meeting and sign up more men.
He didn't do it alone. Gilgandra Diggers, the local WWI history project, says William and his brother Richard were the instigators and organisers of the march. The Gilgandra Region site says Hitchen House at 62 Miller Street is named after the two brothers, who were living there when they decided to start the march, and that the decision was made on its balcony. The St Ambrose Church article also credits Alex Miller, secretary of the local recruiting association.
The authorities weren't keen. According to the AWM, the State Recruiting Board and the Department of Defence wouldn't back the scheme, and over the months at least 50 young men from the Gilgandra district made their own way to Sydney to enlist. In September the Gilgandra Recruiting Association decided to go ahead anyway and raise support locally.
Setting Off
The men left Gilgandra on 10 October 1915. Exactly how many set off is one of those things the sources can't agree on (more on that below), but it was somewhere between about 20 and 35. The St Ambrose article says they went to the cheers of a crowd of 3,000. Bill Hitchen's 14-year-old son Cob and a friend rode along as scouts, dispatch riders and buglers, while his older son, William James Hitchen, had already enlisted and was overseas.
A stone cairn in Bridge Street now marks the spot where they set out, and there's a mural on a wall nearby.
The Road to Sydney
The AWM lists the route town by town: Gilgandra, Balladoran, Eumungerie, Mogriguy, Dubbo, Wongarbon, Geurie, Wellington, Dripstone, Mumbil, Stuart Town, Euchareena, Boomey, Molong, Orange, Millthorpe, Blayney, Bathampton, Bathurst, Yetholme, Wallerawang, Lithgow, Little Hartley, Mount Victoria, Katoomba, Lawson, Springwood, Penrith, Parramatta, Ashfield and Sydney. That's about 320 miles, or 510 km.
As they came into each town they gave the old bush call, "coo-ee", to draw a crowd, and that's how the march got its name. The towns fed them, put them up and turned out to cheer. The Snowball marches article says they were given about 50 dungarees in Dubbo, army greatcoats in Orange and more dungarees in Lithgow. Up in the Blue Mountains someone even set up a drink stall for them beside the Marked Tree at Medlow Bath.
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They reached Sydney on Friday 12 November 1915, just over a month after leaving home, and by then there were 263 of them. Thousands lined the route from Ashfield to the Domain, and big crowds packed George Street near the Town Hall, where the Minister for Works gave them an official welcome on behalf of the Premier.
After the March
The AWM says the Coo-ees trained for four months at Liverpool camp and sailed for Egypt on the Star of England on 8 March 1916. Some stayed with the 13th Battalion and others went to the 45th, and all of them served in France. Their example started a run of other "snowball" marches between October 1915 and February 1916: the Waratahs from Nowra, the Kangaroos from Wagga, the Wallabies from Narrabri to Newcastle, the Dungarees in Queensland and more. Bill and Richard Hitchen organised another one, the Kookaburra March from Tooraweenah to Bathurst, in January 1916.
A couple of the Gilgandra men came home with medals. Leslie Greenleaf, a young British immigrant who was only 17 when he signed up, won the Military Medal at Villers-Bretonneux in 1918 and, according to Wikipedia, was the last survivor of the original marchers. Tom Turvey won the Military Medal at Gueudecourt in February 1917 "for bravery in the field".
Bill Hitchen Never Saw the Trenches
This is the bit that gets me. Bill Hitchen marched the whole way, then, at 51, told the army he was 44 and enlisted himself. He went into the 45th Battalion as private 1677 and left Sydney on 14 April 1916. Gilgandra Diggers says he got sick on the voyage and went straight into hospital when he landed in England in June. He died at Harefield Hospital, outside London, on 3 September 1916, from melanotic sarcoma, a skin cancer.
A young Gilgandra soldier, Albert Tracey, who'd known him all his life, sat with him near the end. The AWM quotes what Tracey wrote home: "you know, Albert, I can't write, but you tell the people from me it wasn't my fault I never got to the trenches". His son was brought over from the Western Front to see him before he died. He's buried in St Mary's churchyard at Harefield, and Gilgandra Diggers says the Harefield schoolchildren have put flowers on those graves every year since the 1920s. His widow Emma moved to Kensington in Sydney and called her house "Cooee".
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The Coo-ee Church: St Ambrose
Here's a lovely postscript. After the war, the parishioners of St Ambrose Church in Bournemouth, England, decided to give £1,200 as a peace thank-offering to a town in the Empire with a good church record and a good war record. The Bishop of Bathurst, George Long, heard about it while he was in London and talked them into waiting until Gilgandra's case had been put. It worked. The district had sent 250 volunteers out of a population of 4,500, and it had the Coo-ee March.
Gilgandra was chosen in December 1919. The Governor, Sir Walter Davidson, laid the foundation stone on 22 November 1920. The church was designed by Louis R. Williams of the Melbourne firm North and Williams, built by J. D. Ryan, and consecrated by Bishop Long on 26 July 1922. It's also known as the Cooee Church, and it was added to the State Heritage Register on 28 January 2011.
Floods and Droughts
The Castlereagh is a river of extremes. When Charles Sturt came through the same country in 1828, ten years after Oxley, it was in a terrible drought, and he found the river dry for miles with only the odd waterhole. People still call it an "upside down river", and flood peaks have been recorded taking as little as nine hours or as long as 47 hours to get from Coonabarabran down to Gilgandra.
The Castlereagh River article says the two worst floods since Europeans arrived were in 1874 and 1955. In January 1874 heavy rain set the river rising on Saturday the 24th, and at Gilgandra it peaked at 5 pm on Monday the 26th. Thousands of stock drowned, and buildings were damaged at Binnaway, Mendooran, Gilgandra and Coonamble. In July 1920, low-lying houses north and south of the main street were badly flooded and police moved people out of the older parts of town. The main street stayed dry, with the river peaking one foot below the bridge. The February 1955 flood, brought on by cyclonic weather in the north, was the worst of all. In January 2010 another big flood went over more than 400 rural properties along the river.
Farms, Hoes and the Rural Museum
Gilgandra gave the world one more thing besides the Coo-ees: the rotary hoe. Arthur Clifford "Cliff" Howard's father moved to a property called Mountain View at Biddon, near Gilgandra, in 1908. In 1912, after his father bought a steam tractor, Cliff hit on the idea of using the engine to drive blades that turned the soil over instead of packing it down like a plough. He built and tested his first prototype on the farm and patented the rotary hoe in 1919.
You can see it at the Gilgandra Rural Museum, run by volunteers from the Gilgandra Historical Society. The society was formed in 1967. The museum started in what's now the library, moved to the Heritage Centre, and got its own building in 1997. It's on the Newell Highway near the Coo-ee Heritage Centre, and you'll know it by the big windmill out the front, which drives one of the working displays. Inside are a Howard rotary hoe, a Ridley stripper and a Ruston & Proctor steam traction engine. The museum's own site says it's open 9 am to 1 pm every day except Christmas Day. The Windmill Walk starts at the museum and follows the river into town.
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Gilgandra Today
At the 2016 census the town had about 2,600 people, and the wider area about 4,300. Wikipedia says 13.8% of the wider area identified as Aboriginal, and farming and forestry was the biggest employer.
For a visitor there's a fair bit. The Coo-ee Heritage and Visitor Information Centre at the south end of town holds the Gilgandra Art Gallery, the Joy Trudgett Gallery with Aboriginal artefacts and fossils, and the Allan Wise Gallery of family history. Hitchen House tells the Coo-ee story. Wikipedia also says there's a privately owned observatory open to the public from Wednesday to Sunday, and the Gilgandra Native Flora Reserve, 8.5 hectares of bush that's at its best for wildflowers from September to November. Every October long weekend the town holds the Cooee Festival, with a street parade, wood chopping and a coo-ee calling competition. In January there's the Gilgandra Cup at the racecourse, which has the town's golf course laid out inside the track. The town is also a gateway to the Warrumbungles.
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Timeline
- At least 25,000 years ago: people living east of Gilgandra (Warrumbungle National Park guidebook, cited by Wikipedia)
- 8 July 1818: George Evans sets out from Mount Harris and crosses the Castlereagh
- 18 July 1818: Oxley names the Castlereagh River after Lord Castlereagh
- 27 July – 2 August 1818: Oxley's party held up by flood on the Castlereagh near Coonamble
- 1828: Charles Sturt finds the Castlereagh dry in drought
- Early 1832: Robert Lowe runs cattle at "Yalcogrin" between Gilgandra and Curban
- 1836: Squatting licensed, with a rush of applications for Castlereagh runs
- 1852: Hannah Morris settles in the district
- 1867: Gilgandra post office formally set up
- January 1874: Great flood on the Castlereagh
- 1878: Bridge built at Gilgandra
- 1881: School opens
- 1884: First courthouse hearings
- 1888: Gilgandra proclaimed a town
- 1889: First town blocks sold
- 20 July 1900: Breelong murders
- 18 January 1901: Jimmy Governor hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol
- 18 February 1903: Railway reaches Gilgandra on the Coonamble line
- 1905: Windmills advertised in the first local newspapers
- 1906: Gilgandra Shire constituted, and Bill Hitchen moves to town
- 1912: Cliff Howard tests his rotary hoe prototype near Gilgandra
- 10 October 1915: Coo-ee March leaves Gilgandra
- 12 November 1915: Coo-ees reach Sydney, 263 strong
- January 1916: Kookaburra March from Tooraweenah to Bathurst
- 8 March 1916: Coo-ees sail on the Star of England
- 3 September 1916: Bill Hitchen dies at Harefield, England
- December 1919: Gilgandra chosen for the Bournemouth gift
- July 1920: Floods in low parts of town
- 26 July 1922: St Ambrose Church consecrated
- 1948: Over 300 windmills reported in town
- February 1955: The worst flood on record on the Castlereagh
- 1966: Town water supply built
- 1967: Gilgandra Historical Society formed
- 1990: Gilgandra station closes
- 1997: Rural Museum building opens
- January 2010: Flood across 400-plus rural properties
- 28 January 2011: St Ambrose added to the State Heritage Register
- 2017: Coonamble line restoration finished
Where the Sources Disagree
- How many set off on the Coo-ee March. Wikipedia's Gilgandra and Snowball marches articles say 26. The Gilgandra Region site says 25. The AWM Last Post story says "20 or so". The St Ambrose Church article says 30 left and 5 more Gilgandra men joined along the way, and the Gilgandra article itself speaks of the "original 35 men" when talking about Leslie Greenleaf and Tom Turvey. The figure of 263 arriving in Sydney is the same everywhere I looked.
- Whose country. The Gilgandra Region site says Wiradjuri, Kamilaroi and Wailwan. Wikipedia's Gilgandra article says Gamilaraay, Wiradjuri and Wayilwan. The Castlereagh River article puts Gilgandra itself at the northern end of Wiradjuri country, with Gamilaraay country upstream and Wailwan downstream, and the groups overlapping along the river.
- When the windmills hit 300. Wikipedia says over 300 were reported in 1948. The Gilgandra Region site says over 300 "by the 1950s".
- Bill Hitchen's age. Gilgandra Diggers and the AWM say he was 51 when he enlisted and told the army he was 44. The AWM Roll of Honour gives his age at death as 52.
- Who organised the march. The AWM puts it down to Bill Hitchen. Gilgandra Diggers and the Gilgandra Region site name both Bill and his brother Richard. The St Ambrose article adds Alex Miller of the recruiting association.
- Where Bill Hitchen is buried. The AWM Last Post transcript says St Mary's churchyard at "Harefield, New South Wales". The same transcript, Gilgandra Diggers and the Roll of Honour all place Harefield outside London, so that looks like a slip in the transcript.
My Earlier Posts
- Jimmy Governor and Gilgandra – The Breelong Murders and the Manhunt of 1900
- Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol – The Executions and Famous Prisoners
- Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court – Forbes Street & Taylor Square
- History Of Dubbo – New South Wales
- Names Of Railway Stations In New South Wales – Including Aboriginal Names & Meanings
- Sydney Town Hall – Druitt Street And George Street Sydney
Sources
- Wikipedia, Gilgandra, New South Wales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgandra
- Wikipedia, Castlereagh River: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlereagh_River
- Wikipedia, Jimmy Governor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Governor
- Wikipedia, Snowball marches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_marches
- Wikipedia, St Ambrose Church, Gilgandra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Ambrose_Church,_Gilgandra
- Wikipedia, Coonamble railway line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coonamble_railway_line
- NSWrail.net, Gilgandra Station: https://www.nswrail.net/locations/show.php?name=NSW:Gilgandra
- Australian War Memorial, Coo-ees recruiting march: https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/recruiting_march/cooees
- Australian War Memorial, Last Post Ceremony for Private William Thomas Hitchen: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2610814
- Australian War Memorial, Roll of Honour: William Thomas Hitchen: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/R1631012
- Gilgandra Diggers, Hitchen William Thomas: https://gilgandradiggers.org.au/hitchen-william-thomas/
- Gilgandra Region NSW, History of Gilgandra: https://www.gilgandraregion.com.au/explore/history-of-gilgandra
- Gilgandra Region NSW, Hitchen House: https://www.gilgandraregion.com.au/directory/hitchen-house
- Gilgandra Rural Museum: https://gilgandraruralmuseum.com/
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, individual file pages as linked under each picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gilgandra,_New_South_Wales
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