Bear and the Princess are going to go touring in country NSW. We just need to get away because Vevencia has been fighting cancer for 3 years and the latest PET scan today looks clear. She has been through so much. Time for a holiday.

I thought might take a picture of every old Post Office and interesting old buildings in the towns we go through.

Our first town was only 100 km from home and on the NSW border …

Texas, Queensland

“Texas sits on Bigambul land, the Indigenous people of the region inhabited the area for thousands of years prior to colonisation in the 1840s.

The origin of the town’s name is generally regarded as a reference to a territorial dispute. The land in the area was first settled by the McDougall brothers, who found squatters there on returning from the goldfields. Once their legal right to the land was recognised, they named their property in honour of the rather more famous dispute between the United States and Mexico over territory in Texas, USA.]

Texas was connected by the Texas railway line from Inglewood in November 1930 with the town being served by the Texas railway station. The line was closed in 1994.

Up until about 1986, tobacco farming was an important industry in the area and many Italian families settled the area to run and work the tobacco farms.”

Warialda NSW

“The original inhabitants of the region were the Weraerai Aborigines and the first whites in the area were probably escaped convicts. Allan Cunningham was the first official European visitor in 1827. The first settlement was established in 1837 with a police outstation erected around 1840. The town site was gazetted in 1847 and was the first in the Northwest Slopes region. Warialda was the headquarters of the Yallaroi Shire, until its merger with neighbouring Bingara Shire to form Gwydir Shire. Warialda Post Office opened on 1 January 1848. The town’s first newspaper was the Warialda Standard, which was first published in 1896 and remains in publication.”

Bingara NSW

“In 1827 Allan Cunningham crossed the Gwydir River near Bingara. At the time he mistook the river to be the Peel River, but realised his mistake on his return journey. The discovery of gold in 1852 brought prospectors to the area. In the 1880s, copper and diamonds were discovered also, causing a rapid development of the town. Bingara is one of the few places in Australia where diamonds have been found. In fact, Bingara was the largest producer of diamonds in Australia at that time. Bingara changed the spelling of its name from Bingera to Bingara in 1890. The first Bingera Post Office opened on 1 January 1853 and was renamed Upper Bingera in 1862 and closed in 1868. The second Bingera office opened in 1862 and was renamed Bingara in 1890.”

Coonabarabran NSW

“In 1817 the area was opened up by a Government-sponsored expedition. In 1818 John Oxley found Aboriginal people living here — later identified as the western language reach of the Kamilaroi clans (Gamilaraay is the spelling used by linguists). Kamilaroi people are still well represented in the region, having occupied Coonabarabran for approximately 7,500 years.

In 1859 Lewis Gordon first proposed a town plan survey for Coonabarabran.

Nobody really seems to know the source and meaning of the word Coonabarabran. It may derive from a person’s name or from the Kamilaroi language word ‘gunbaraaybaa’ meaning ‘excrement’, translated earlier as meaning, ‘peculiar odour’, this possibly is a bowdlerisation. Another meaning is derived from an Aboriginal word for ‘inquisitive person’. ‘Coolabarabran’ was the name of a station owned by James Weston in 1848.

Coonabarabran Post Office opened on 1 January 1850.

Coonabarabran Memorial Clock Tower is a central feature of the town, in the intersection of John Street and Dalgarno Street. It was built from local sandstone and dedicated in 1928.

Coonabarabran is the gateway to the Warrumbungle National Park and the Pilliga Forest.”

That was the end of our first day’s travel. Not a good nights sleep however as we selected a motel on price and it was on the highway. The noise of the trucks was terrible so we vowed not to make that mistake again!

Donation for coffee

Like viewing my posts please buy a coffee.

A$5.00