100 Towns

Badangora is an old mining town but when the mine closed down in the 1920s went into permanent decline.  Today there is a a church, a war memorial and a smattering of houses along the near empty streets. It is even off the highway along a dirt track, with no reason for any stranger to visit unless they are collecting images of old towns.

Geurie is small town (population 500) around midway between the larger centres of Wellington and Dubbo so I guess began as a wayside spot.  It is on the railway line that is serviced by the daily XPT passenger service from Sydney to Dubbo. I noticed a big grain silo beside the railway line too.  I am sure that also played a part in its history. The town today has shops, a swimming pool, community halls, sports fields and of course houses.  It seems like a nice well functioning community.

In the late 1800s Cobb and Co coaches ran regularly along the highways of the country until motor vehicles in the 1900s  killed off the business.  There were Cobb and Co changing stations at  Neurea  and  Bakers Swamp .

1. Dray in paddock 2. Petrol bowser at old general store 3. Euchareena home 4. Modern community hall 5. In better shape than this building 6. Local church When I first blogged about Euchareena I wrote "Euchareena is like a town that stopped. This dray isn't in a museum, it's in the paddock near the house, just as if one day they parked the dray, put the horse out the pasture and time stood still." The town's growth is said to have been spurred along by the arrival of the railway, though I don't think it ever grew big. The station was closed around 40 years ago. Today there are about 20 houses, a modern community centre, school, church and rural fire service building. The kind of place passed through on the way from somewhere to somewhere else but a pleasant place for locals to live. View Euchareena's location on the map.

1. Stuart Town welcome sign 2. Old shop 3. Old bakery 4. Hotel (not Royal) 5. School of Arts 6. War Memorial 7. Railway platform Stuart Town, which started with an 1870s gold rush, was first known as Ironbarks, made famous in the Banjo Paterson poem "The Man from Ironbark". Old shops still stand, now serving new purposes. There is a working pub and general store and a railway station visited daily by the Western Line XPT passenger service. Today its population of around 300 serves the local rural community - wheat, sheep and orchards. It is a bit of backwater which has left much of its old town quaintness intact for rust and ghost sign lovers to enjoy. See where Stuart Town is on the map.

1. Mumbil General Store 2. Houses in the town 3. Community Hall 4. War memorial outside the community hall 5. Rural fire brigade setting up for weekend exercises 6. Nearby Lake Burrendong Mumbil began it's growth when the train arrived in 1879. It had a busy period during the construction of Burrendong Dam which began in 1946, then settled into its small town existence.  It is a low rise town with a school, general store, pub and a good sized cluster of straggly country houses along meandering streets. Community spirit is evident in a neatly kept community hall and active rural fire service.  The sign at the entrance to the town boasts of the annual Black Wattle festival which seemed rather odd until I found the name Mumbil derives from the aboriginal word for Black Wattle. As the nearest town to Lake Burrendong it serves as a place for campers to replenish supplies and grab a drink at the pub. There is a big camping ground at the Lake. Now the big drought is o...

1. Dripstone house 2. Old stone building now a shed 3. Landscape 4. Rural Fire Service 5. Church of St Agnes of the Springs Today Dripstone is a small cluster of houses beside a disused railway station. The railway reached this location in 1880, then known as the Springs. I don't know why this town came into being, whether the town grew because of the train or whether the train came because there was already a town. Perhaps the springs had something to do with it. There are apparently a large number of springs in the district and nearby is a large rock which is always oozing water, leading to the name Dripstone which it took on in 1890. Either way this small community still lives with occupied houses and a rural fire service.  The rural setting is pleasant but unremarkable.  Most fascinating to me is the old church 1km down the road from the main town. Apparently it closed in the 1960s and is now a picturesque, melancholy shell. View the map to see where Dripstone...

1. Sculpture at the gateway to the town 2. Post Office 3. War Memorial 4. Lion of Waterloo Hotel 5. Grain silos 6. Macquarie River 7. Streetscape The modern sculpture at the entrance of Wellington , near the famous Wellington Caves, is not exactly characteristic of the town. This is a classic larger Western NSW town with a population of around 4,600. Attractive well kept two story municipal buildings, palm lined streets and an elegant town park with a more ornate then most the war memorial are testament to days of wealth and prosperity fed by gold, and the produce of rich farmland.  The Lion of Wellington hotel established in the 1840s boasts to be the oldest operating hotel west of the Blue Mountains. Like so many of these inland towns grain silos stand by the railway line which reached Wellington in 1880 and is still visited daily by the Sydney-Dubbo XPT service. After a brief stop the XPT rumbles across the railway bridge over the beautiful Macquarie River Wh...