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| The Goolgowi Post Office
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Goolgowi (including Merriwagga and Gunbar)
Quiet town near the famous 'Black Stump'
Located 649 km west of Sydney via the Great and Mid Western
Highways Goolgowi is the headquarters of Carrathool shire.
If it was a little further west it could fairly be described
as being 'beyond the black stump' (an expression used to
describe incredible isolation) because nearby is Merriwagga
which claims to be the home of the Black Stump.
32 km west along the Mid Western Highway en route for Hay
is Gunbar, said to be an Aboriginal word meaning place of
plentiful meat. Once a thriving township based on income
derived from Cobb & Co. passengers and local station owners
Gunbar is virtually a ghost town today.
The first run in the area was probably 'Honuna'. Gazetted
in 1849 it later became a part of the 'Gunbar' run. The
village grew around what began as a teamsters' campsite. A
grog shop opened there, resulting in a drunken fight
involving both whites and Aborigines over the issue of
whether or not another keg would be opened. Lives were lost.
An inn had replaced the grog shop by 1871.
In 1884 a new township was surveyed and laid out about 2
km from the existing site but owing to a lack of fresh water
and shade settlement reverted to the previous site, which is
where it stands today. The depression hit the town hard and
people began to drift away. Today few buildings remain other
than the Pioneer Memorial Church, built in 1934 to replace
the original 1884 structure. Its unique stained glass window
is a further tribute to the district's European pioneers.
22 km north of Goolgowi is Merriwagga, which claims to
have the tallest hotel bar in the west.
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| The black stump at
Merriwagga south of Hillston |
Its other claim to fame is its association with the
'Black Stump'. At the Black Stump Picnic area is a pioneer
wagon and a memorial stone which explains the legend. In
1886 a bullocky named Blain stopped at what has subsequently
been gazetted as the Black Stump Tank, ten miles west of the
marker. This was an overnight camp and watering place for
wagon trains carting materials south to the paddle steamers
on the Murrimbidgee River. Blain went looking for feed for
his animals leaving his wife to make camp for the evening.
When he returned he found her burned to death, presumably as
a result of lighting the fire for the evening meal. It is
said that, in the unsentimental and laconic mode associated
with the Australian bush, he explained that she 'looked just
like a black stump'. The idea of the 'black stump' has
entered the vernacular as a reference point for the outward
limits of imaginable distance in sayings such as 'beyond the
black stump' and 'this side of the black stump'. Mrs Blain
was buried in the Gunbar cemetery.
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| The Black Stump Hotel,
Merriwagga |
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Goolgowi
