Brewarrina


Brewarrina is a town in north-west New South Wales, Australia on the banks of the Barwon River in Brewarrina Shire. It is east of Bourke and west of Walgett on the Kamilaroi Highway, and 787 km from Sydney. The population of Brewarrina in 2021 was 743. Other towns and villages in the Brewarrina district include: Goodooga, Gongolgon, Weilmoringle, and Angledool.
Today it is known as the location of the Ngunnhu, which were created over 40,000 years ago. Brewarrina Aboriginal Mission existed alongside the river from 1876 to 1967.

History

Pre-colonisation

The town is located amid the traditional lands of the Ngemba, Murrawarri, Euahlayi, Weilwan, and Barranbinya peoples, who have lived on the land for at least 2000 generations. The area has a long Indigenous Australian history and was once the meeting ground for over 5,000 people.
The Ngunnhu are estimated to be over 40,000 years old.
The name Brewarrina is derived from burru waranha, a Weilwan Weilwan name for a species of acacia, Cassia tree, "Acacia clumps", "a native standing", or "place where wild gooseberry grows".

19th century

The first British colonists arrived in the district in the early 1840s, with the brothers William and Nelson Lawson establishing two holdings – one called Walcha and another called Mohanna. Henry Cox formed Quantambone, while George Joseph Druitt established Brewareena West. These pastoralists were the colonial elite with extensive other landholdings and employed managers to run their properties. For instance, William Lewis and then Cornelius "Con" Bride were the first managers for Quantambone.
In 1859, possibly up to 300 or 400 Aboriginal people were massacred by white settlers in an event known as the Hospital Creek Massacre, recollections of which vary. A memorial was erected by the local Aboriginal Land Council near the site of the massacre.
The town was first known as "Walcha Hut" but this later changed to "Brewarrina".
In 1859 a riverboat called Gemini, skippered by William Randell, reached the town. This opened the possibility of developing the town as a port, and by the early 1860s Brewarrina was recognised as the furthest navigable point on the Darling River. Brewarrina became a port for shipping wool to Adelaide via the Darling and Murray rivers. The town was formally surveyed and laid out in 1861 and proclaimed on 28 April 1863.
The paddle steamer Wandering Jew of 66 tonnes, 22 × 4.4 × 1.5 m, was built in 1866 and registered at Sydney. On 15 December 1914, Wandering Jew was lost due to a fire on Barwon River, Brewarrina. "The Wandering Jew represents an earlier maritime era and provides a direct link to the riverine heritage of Brewarrina. Its colourful history and repeated damage by fire is evocative of the dramas associated with riverboat travel".
The 1870s were a boom time for Brewarrina. The courthouse was built in 1871. The Telegraph reached town in 1873. The Mechanics Institute formed in 1873. The following year two hotels, two stores and the Commercial Bank all opened, and in 1875 The Parish of Brewarrina was formed and public school was opened. All this development was largely due to Cobb and Co, which had a number of coach services passing through the town. There was a service from Byrock, one from Dubbo via Warren and, in 1874, a direct service from Brewarrina to Enngonia, north of Bourke.
The Barwon Bridge opened in 1888, the previous method of crossing the Barwon River was by punt and pontoon. The impetus for Brewarrina bridge, was to capture the New South Wales wool trade from the river paddle steamers and direct it away from Melbourne and Adelaide to Sydney. It is a rare bridge because it, and the lift bridge at North Bourke, are the only surviving examples of the first series of lift bridges in New South Wales. The bridge has been assessed as being of state significance and is listed on the NSW State Heritage Register.
In 1901 the Brewarrina railway line opened to Brewarrina from Byrock, on the Nyngan to Bourke line. The Brewarrina Line closed in 1974, and the wood-framed Brewarrina Station burned to the ground in 1980. The local telephone exchange was established in 1913. The town was surveyed in 1920. Brewarrina was used as a location for the Australian silent film Moora Neya, or The Message of the Spear.

20th century

In the 1970s, Essie Coffey, Tombo Winters, and Steve Gordon co-founded the Brewarrina Aboriginal Movement. They also co-founded the Western Aboriginal Legal Service in the 1970s.
In January 1974, major floods hit the region, affecting Bourke, Walgett, and Brewarrina. The river was up at Brewarrina by 19 January, and was expected to peak at by the 25th. There were food shortages, and flooding made it impossible to bring machinery in to help build defences. Coffey, Winters, Gordon, and Phil Eyre were called upon by the local government and State Emergency Service to mobilise the Aboriginal community to build levees. When Winters realised that the levee would not protect West Brewarrina, where most of the Aboriginal people lived, from flooding, he tried to get boats to ferry people from Dodge City to the town. Gordon, co-founder of and now a field officer with WALS, said that civil defence officers had refused to make boats available for the Aboriginal community, providing only one aluminium rowing boat to service the whole community. The SES denied discrimination on racial grounds, saying that two boats had been flown in, but the first priority use was to link the town with its railway station and airport. A third boat coming in on 22 January would service the Aboriginal settlements for two hours each morning and afternoon. After the SES would not guarantee boats for the Dodge residents, Winters pulled the Aboriginal workers off the levee. On 23 January Gordon contacted the newly-established Chinese embassy in Canberra, which led to a national media response. According to Winters, as soon as reporters arrived, many boats started appearing at Dodge City, but they left after the media left.
On 15 August 1987 Brewarrina erupted into a riot, later known as the Brewarrina riot, triggered by the death in police custody of Lloyd James Boney. This came a few days after the announcement by Prime Minister Bob Hawke of a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, on 10 August 1987. Both the riot and the five-year trials that followed were widely covered by the press, and had continuing legal impact for years afterwards.
Yetta Dhinnakkal Centre, a minimum-security outdoor prison for young Indigenous men that ran an award-winning program, opened in 2000 and closed in 2020. Although often referred to as Brewarrina jail or prison, it was situated about south at Gongolgon.

Heritage listings

Brewarrina has a number of heritage-listed sites, including:
Brewarrina's most significant feature is its Aboriginal fish traps. Known in the local Aboriginal language as Baiame's Ngunnhu. It is believed that Ngemba, Wonkamurra, Wailwan and Gomolaroi people have shared and maintained the traps for thousands of years. The age of the fish traps is currently unknown, but they may be the oldest human construction in the world. Locals claim that the traps are at least 40,000 years old and thus the oldest surviving human-made structure in the world.
Consisting of river stones arranged to form small channels, the traps direct fish into small areas from which they are readily plucked. The traps form a complex net of linked weirs and ponds along 500m of the river. They operate at varying water heights and can be altered to suit seasonal changes. People use their expert knowledge of fish species and the environment to maximise their catch. Brewarrina Ngemba Billabong has been declared a World Conservation Union Category V and VI protected area. It was declared an Indigenous Protected Area in November 2010. The ready availability of fish made Brewarrina one of the great intertribal meeting places of pre-European eastern Australia.

Brewarrina Aboriginal Mission

The Brewarrina Ngemba Billabong has a strong cultural history. From 1876 to 1967 the Ngemba Billabong was the Brewarrina Aboriginal Mission for local Aboriginal people, whose land had been taken for grazing. The entire property is listed on the NSW State Heritage Register. Brewarrina Mission was the first institution formally established by the Aborigines Protection Board as part of its policy to segregate Aboriginal people.
According to a report written for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, "Brewarrina Mission became a focal point for the Board's enforced concentration of Aboriginal people in the 1910s". The Aboriginal people living on the mission often maintained their own community lives and culture, held political meetings, and used their own languages despite the ban on speaking them. In the 1930s, the APA undertook more forced removals of Aboriginal people from different groups, bringing them to the already overcrowded mission from as far away as.
The reserve was reduced from to in 1953.

West Brewarrina ("Dodge City")

The Welfare Board tried to move the mission residents into the town, with the aim of cultural assimilation, but no rental homes were available to Aboriginal people, and the council worked against integration. The Welfare Board then announced a small new reserve, comprising 30 cheap houses built on an exposed, treeless hill within half a mile of the town, which they called West Brewarrina, and in 1965 all of the mission residents were moved there. The residents dubbed their new home "Dodge City", reflecting their knowledge of racial segregation practised in the American cattle town of Dodge City, Kansas. Around this time the Welfare Board was dismantled.
Several Aboriginal activists lived in West Brewarrina and/or worked to improve conditions there. Steve Gordon worked to improve conditions for Aboriginal people living in West Brewarrina and against barriers to employment in the town. He was fired from his job at the meatworks after protesting about Aboriginal workers not being paid award wages. In 1973 he was appointed field officer for the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs, headquartered in Sydney. Essie Coffey was a community worker, singer, actor, and filmmaker, known for her film My Survival as an Aboriginal, filmed in Brewarrina. Coffey, Gordon, and Tombo Winters co-founded the Brewarrina Aboriginal Movement and the Western Aboriginal Legal Service.