Wollombi, New South Wales
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Wollombi ( ) is a small
village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...
in the
Hunter Region The Hunter Region, also commonly known as the Hunter Valley, Newcastle Region, or simply Hunter, spans the region in northern New South Wales, Australia, extending from approximately to north of Sydney. It contains the Hunter River (New Sout ...
of
New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
. It is within the Cessnock City Council
LGA LaGuardia Airport ( ) – colloquially known as LaGuardia or simply LGA – is a civil airport in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City, situated on the northwestern shore of Long Island, bordering Flushing Bay. Covering , the facility wa ...
, situated southwest of Cessnock and north of
Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...
. To the south is the village of Laguna, to the east, the village of
Millfield Millfield is a public school (English fee-charging boarding and day school for pupils aged 13–18) located in Street, Somerset, England. It was founded in 1935. Millfield is a registered charity and is the largest co-educational boarding ...
and to the north, the village of Broke. The valley is bordered to the west by the
World Heritage World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...
listed
Yengo National Park The Yengo National Park is a state park, protected national park that is located in the Hunter Region, Lower Hunter region of New South Wales, in eastern Australia. The park is situated northwest of Sydney, south of , northwest of , and sou ...
(and Yengo State Forest) and the main road, the
convict A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as "prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former convicts ...
-built Great North Road (GNR) forms one of the major legs of the Greater Blue Mountains Drive. To the east lie Watagans National Park along with Corrabare and Olney State Forests. Wollombi's modest modern size is offset by its 19th-century sandstone buildings and timber slab constructed cottages and sheds in a narrow valley junction containing Wollombi Brook and Congewai Creek. Narone and Yango Creeks also join these waterways near the village. The area is home to an abundance of native birds, reptiles and other animals including
kangaroo Kangaroos are marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use, the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern gre ...
s,
wallabies A wallaby () is a small or middle-sized macropod native to Australia and New Guinea, with introduced populations in New Zealand, Hawaii, the United Kingdom and other countries. They belong to the same taxonomic family as kangaroos and som ...
, wallaroos and
wombat Wombats are short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupials of the family Vombatidae that are native to Australia. Living species are about in length with small, stubby tails and weigh between . They are adaptable and habitat tolerant, and are ...
s and is surrounded by imposing tree-lined mountains.


History


Indigenous history

The traditional custodians of the locality are believed to be the Darkinjung people, though the
Awabakal The Awabakal people , are those Aboriginal Australians who identify with or are descended from the Awabakal tribe and its clans, Indigenous to the coastal area of what is now known as the Hunter Region of New South Wales. Their traditional te ...
and
Wonnarua The Wonnarua people, otherwise written Wanarruwa, are a group of Aboriginal Australian people united by strong ties of kinship, and who survived in family groups or clans scattered along the inland area of what is now known as the Upper Hunter ...
nations are also mentioned. The town's name is an Aboriginal term said to mean 'meeting place of the waters' or simply 'meeting place' (''"Derived from Awabakal Aboriginal term for 'meeting of waters', but this cannot be linguistically verified. (Appleton; 1992). Also: meeting of the waters. (McCarthy; 1963)."''). It was apparently pronounced 'Wu-lum-bee', though today it is pronounced Wo (as in wok) - lum (as in thumb) - bi (as in buy). There is a vast number of historic Aboriginal sites in the surrounding countryside which is thought to have been used as a ceremonial meeting place as people from hundreds of kilometres visited the area and made their way to
Mount Yengo Mount Yengo is a mountain that is located in the Lower Hunter region of New South Wales, in eastern Australia. The mountain is part of the Calore Range, part of the Great Dividing Range, and is situated within the Yengo National Park, approxim ...
- a place of great significance throughout the ancient nations of eastern Australia. There are
rock engraving A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions o ...
s, sharpening grooves,
hand stencils In archaeology, cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin. These paintings were often created by ''Homo ...
, tribal markings and other images in caves and outcrops, frequent evidence of camping sites along the Brook and its tributary creeks, and two major mapping sites containing many engravings.


European history

The establishment, development and significance of the township of Wollombi was directly connected with the construction and importance of the Great Northern Road in the early 19th century. The Howes Valley Rd ( Putty Road) was completed in 1823, but travel along it was thought to be too difficult to be a success commercially. Major Thomas Mitchell - Surveyor-General - formulated the idea of an inland route to open up transport to regions in northern NSW
Heneage Finch
who later settled in Laguna, surveyed the route for the Great Northern Road via Castle Hill, Wisemans Ferry,
St Albans St Albans () is a cathedral city in Hertfordshire, England, east of Hemel Hempstead and west of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Hatfield, north-west of London, south-west of Welwyn Garden City and south-east of Luton. St Albans was the first major ...
, Laguna and Wollombi. At Wollombi, the road diverged toward Singleton and
Muswellbrook Muswellbrook ( ) is a town in the Upper Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia, about north of Sydney and north-west of Newcastle, New South Wales, Newcastle. Geologically, Muswellbrook is situated in the northern parts of the Sydney bas ...
to the north, and Cessnock and Maitland to the north east. Hundreds of
convict A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as "prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former convicts ...
s began building the road from Castle Hill to Wollombi. One group was headquartered at Castle Hill where over 380 men were organised in seven road parties. They began work on the section of road south of the Hawkesbury. A second group, of 119 men, worked from Newcastle in two road parties, one between Newcastle and Wallis Plains (Maitland) and the other between Wallis Plains and Wollombi.''Cunneen's Bridge Conservation Assessment''
By Bill Jordan and Associates Pty Ltd (1.75MB pdf file)
Road construction commenced in 1826 and was completed in 1831. Remnants such as stone culverts, bridges and retaining walls remain, particularly in the area between Wisemans Ferry and Wollombi, and are catalogued and cared for b
The Convict Trail Project
During the years before the GNR was commenced, only a few large land grants () were allocated along Cockfighter's Creek or the lower Wollombi Brook, to John Blaxland and - Rodd at
Fordwich Fordwich is a market town and a civil parish in east Kent, England, on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour, northeast of Canterbury. It is the smallest community by population in Britain with a Parish council (England), town council. Its popul ...
, Heneage Finch at Laguna and Thomas Crawford at Congewai. Richard Wiseman received near Wollombi. After 1830 the holdings in the Wollombi Valley were about . Surveyor GB White surveyed the village reserve at Wollombi into sections and allotments in 1833. A horseman who travelled from Sydney to Patrick's Plains in 1827 along the line of road in progress took three days for the journey – the first day to Wiseman's Ferry - . The second day to 'the head of the Wollombi' (about south of the future Wollombi village reserve) - , and the third day to Patrick's Plains - , made a total of . The settlement developed as a centre for the farming community and for travellers on the Great North Road. Then, on 12 June 1831, the steamship 'Sophie Jane' sailed from Sydney to the port of Morpeth on the
Hunter River Hunter River may refer to: *Hunter River (New South Wales), Australia *Hunter River (Western Australia) *Hunter River, New Zealand *Hunter River (Prince Edward Island), Canada **Hunter River, Prince Edward Island, community on Hunter River, Canada ...
in eleven and a half hours. With the speed and carrying capacity of the ship far surpassing that of road transport to the Hunter region, the commercial significance of the Great Northern Road immediately diminished. By the early 1840s, the inns operating at intervals along the Great North Road and its branch toward Maitland were (Solomon) Wiseman's at the Ferry, (Richard) Wiseman's Inn at the head of the Wollombi Valley (from 1827), Traveller's Test at Laguna (1835), Governor Gipps at Wollombi (1840), Rising Sun at Millfield (1840s) and the Cock Inn on Cockfighter Creek (c1840s). The foundation stone o
Saint Michael's Catholic Church
was laid near the Congewai Creek crossing (Cunneens Bridge) in 1840 but the church was moved to its present location following severe damage in the 1893 flood. St John's Anglican Church was built in 1846. The Wollombi Telegraph Office opened in 1860, the former Police station and Courthouse (now Endeavour Museum) was built c1866, the stone School building c1881 (the original school opened in 1852''Schools of the Wollombi Valley A brief History'' - Wollombi and Laguna Parents and Citizens Associations October 1981 (Reprinted July 1990) pp. 1-9) and the timber General Store is well over a century old. By 1850 the village had an Anglican and Catholic Church, a flour mill, a village cemetery and its own District Council. By 1851 the population was recorded as 105. By 1862 there were 1655 people living in the district with 233 in the village itself and by 1867 there were 1800 people in the area. The 1860s were the years of greatest development. The production figures for 1867 were 26,856 bushels of wheat, 23,042 bushels of maize, 398 of barley, 680 of oats, 88 tons of potatoes, 7,502 lbs of tobacco and 180 gallons of wine. The livestock numbers in the valley were as follows: 5,853 head of cattle, 3,543 sheep and 1,449 pigs.Elkin A. P. ''The Wollombi and the Parish of Wollombi.'' Courtney, Cessnock 1946 Rust devastated the area in the 1870s causing wheat crop failures. This undermined the economic base of the region and along with overfarming of the land causing a loss of productivity and severe floods removing topsoil, the district entered a period of decline which continues to the present time. By 1911 the population of the village had reached a high of 406 but it had declined to 151 in 1961.
- 8 February 2004
In the , the population of Wollombi was 264, consisting of 136 male and 128 female residents. Wollombi Public School was closed at the end of 2014 despite a long-running campaign by parents to keep the school operating.Parents lose fight to keep Wollombi Public School open ''ABC News'' (Online - Retrieved on 2016-08-02)
- 12 Nov 2014


Saint Michael the Archangel

It is a Gothic-style
Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
church made out of sandstone opened on 30 September 1840. It is located between the Old Post Office and the Forge. Australia's first Catholic bishop and the first Archbishop of Sydney Rev John Bede Polding rode into Wollombi on horseback to lay the first foundation stone. Polding bought the stone for 5 pounds near Cunnenn's Bridge on the Wollombi Brook with mass beginning in 1843. It was heavily damaged by flooding in 1893. The new foundation stone was laid by Reverend James Murray on 22 October 1893. The 1840 foundation began the church western wall. The cost of the removal and reconstruction was 850 pounds. The 1893 restoration was completed by architect Frederick Menekens. The church was damaged by the Newcastle Earthquake In 1991 the church was put off auction which the community bought back for $120,000 with pews purchased for $3,400 returned to the community. Australian Catholic Historical Society gifted the Friends of St Michaels was gifted a portrait of John Bede Polding in 1992. On 3 October 1999 Rev Michael Malone reopended the church to mass. The friends of St Michaels was formed as the official of the church with appointed trustees. Government -assisted grants enabled the Friends of St Michael to begin renovations. In 2005 local artist Margaret Ella was commissioned to design and craft a series of windows based on Creation as described in the Book of Genesis.
Australian Catholic University Australian Catholic University (ACU) is a public university in Australia. It has seven Australian campuses and also maintains a campus in Rome. History Australian Catholic University was opened on 1 January 1991 following the amalgamation ...
commissioned a book about the church by Alison Plummer was published in 2019.


Heritage listings

Wollombi has a number of heritage-listed sites, including: *
Great North Road (Mount Manning to Wollombi Section) Great North Road (Mount Manning to Wollombi Section) is a heritage-listed road alignment, partly in use and partly abandoned, between Mount Manning and Wollombi, New South Wales, Australia. It was built between 1830 and 1832 by convict road ...
* St John the Evangelist Church * Wollombi Endeavour Museum (former court house)


Gallery


Footnotes


References


''Wollombi Valley Online'' - Wollombi History
(Used with permission) * ''Explore the Convict Trail: Great North Road'' - * D Mahony and J Whitehead, eds, ''The Way of the River Environmental Perspectives on the Wollombi'', Wollombi Valley Landcare Group - University of Newcastle Department of Community Programmes 1994


External links

*
Wollombi Valley Community Website

Greater Blue Mountains Area
at
UNESCO World Heritage Centre UNESCO Headquarters, or Maison de l'UNESCO, is a building inaugurated on 3 November 1958 at number 7 Place de Fontenoy in Paris, France, to serve as the headquarters for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ...

Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute

Wollombi Valley Arts Council
{{authority control Towns in the Hunter Region Suburbs of City of Cessnock Hunter River (New South Wales)