Curlewis is a parish and a rural village on the

Kamilaroi Highway Kamilaroi Highway is a state highway located in the north-western region of New South Wales, Australia, and links via and to . The highway is named after the Kamilaroi Indigenous Australian people who live in the area. Route The highway be ...

, 16 kilometres south of

Gunnedah, New South Wales Gunnedah is a town in north-eastern New South Wales, Australia and is the seat of the Gunnedah Shire local government area. In the the town recorded a population of 9,726. Gunnedah is situated within the Liverpool Plains, a fertile agricultur ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. The village boundaries are in the

Gunnedah Shire Gunnedah Shire is a local government area in the North West Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia. The Shire is located adjacent to the Liverpool Plains in the Namoi River valley and is traversed by the Oxley Highway and the Kamilaroi H ...

local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a State (administrative division), state, province, divi ...

of the

North West Slopes The North West Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia, refers generally to the area west of the Northern Tablelands, to the north of the Central West region and to the east of the Far West region. Despite its name, the region is in north- ...

portion of the

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

region.

History

Curlewis was founded by Henry Thomas Pike, a sawmiller from

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

who became the mayor of Gunnedah. In 1909, the railway station opened as a stop on the Mungindi branch line, but has since closed. The station building was demolished in May 2013 after the roof was damaged by a storm earlier that year.

Livestock Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals ...

sales commenced in 1919 in Curlewis and were, for many years, held in alternate weeks at Gunnedah and Curlewis until improvements to the Gunnedah saleyards, eclipsed Curlewis's yardings and led to the yard’s closure. The lack of a nearby river has contributed to Curlewis having persistent water problems and

water shortage Water scarcity (closely related to water stress or water crisis) is the lack of fresh water resources to meet the standard water demand. There are two types of water scarcity: physical or economic water scarcity. Physical water scarcity is where ...

. In 1950, the council had to de-silt an old earthen dam and erect a tank from which Curlewis residents could draw water. Reticulated water was connected to Curlewis in 1972.

Population

In the , Curlewis had a resident population of 605 people, 51.9% male and 48.1% female. 26% of the population had Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander background, compared with 3.2% in Australia. The most common form of employment for residents was coal mining (10.5%). Curlewis now has a hotel, a public school (with 49 pupils enrolled), a general store, grain silo, police station, sports ground and a Rural Fire Service. The Curlewis area is home to a large

koala The koala or, inaccurately, koala bear (''Phascolarctos cinereus''), is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia. It is the only extant representative of the family Phascolarctidae and its closest living relatives are the womb ...

population and they may be seen on local farms, in the woodlands and village.

References

{{authority control Towns in New South Wales Gunnedah Shire