Although it is essentially a ghost town, Milparinka still has an operating hotel – the Albert Hotel – dating from around 1882. You could do worse than stay for a night or two. Should you do so the outcome will be an understanding of outback Australia in a way that is now very hard to find. Milparinka also has the Courthouse, a structure that took more than 18 months to build and was first used in 1897. It was carefully restored in 1988-89 when a bicentennial grant was received for the purpose. That part of the town has become the Historical Precinct and consists, basically, of the structures that were associated with government – the courthouse, two-celled lockup, police station and trooper’s accommodation, a house for the sergeant, and the post office.
Within a few hundred meters of the courthouse and the Albert Hotel there used to be at least another forty structures. Unless you were told where and what they were, some would never be noticed. In addition there are some that really are not there, just to add to the confusion.
It has been suggested that seven thousand people lived at Milparinka. Another suggestion is a population of two thousand. However, the real population of the entire goldfield (Milparinka, Tibooburra, Warratta and Mount Browne) was never more than about 1,500 people. That was in 1881 or early 1882. Since then the largest number of people to live at Milparinka was about one hundred and fifty. Milparinka stayed that size for most of the 1880s and 1890s, but then just faded away. The people were gold miners, tank-sinkers, carpenters, stone-masons, shearers, bullock drivers, storekeepers, publicans, and public servants. Some were the whole lot mixed together. There was a chemist, general stores, bakery, newspaper office, tailor, blacksmith and bank – but not necessarily all at the same time…There was also up to four hotels, depending upon the year under consideration. Things ebbed and flowed in rhythm with what was happening, not only in town but elsewhere in the world.
There was no gold to be found at Milparinka, but it did owe its existence to the discovery of gold. In mid-1880 gold was discovered not far away on the Mount Poole Run and a little later on, at Mount Browne to the south-west. As the European explorer Charles Sturt learned in 1845, there is not much water around this part of the far west. When the gold diggers used up the few small waterholes and puddles of rainwater near Mount Browne, they were forced to retreat to Milparinka. There was more water here – in Milparinka waterhole. The town grew on higher ground alongside the waterhole.
Image: Mount Browne 1985
Many of the people who lived in Milparinka had come from Wilcannia when gold was first discovered and stayed on. Some had no choice – they had too much invested in the town. Others lived in hope of ‘striking it rich’. All of them had a hard life, but it seems they still managed to have fun. They held dances and socials, athletic club meetings were held each year, and the Milparinka Turf Club took things quite seriously. The man on the right with silver-grey hair is Cornelius Clune, licensee of the Royal Standard Hotel. The little girl winning the race is probably Popsie Blore. Image: Picnic Day 1900 (Foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia) and the start of a new century. (Photographer unknown from the collection of Gerald Blore)
Milparinka was the main police post for the north-west of New South Wales and the terminus of the original telegraph line from Bourke via Wanaaring. The route of the telegraph was along the “Cut Line” – a line cleared specifically for the purpose.
Milparinka was also, in the 1890s, the junction of several coach routes, linking Milparinka with Thargomindah via Tibooburra, with Bourke via Wanaaring, with Wilcannia and with Broken Hill. The main post office for the far north-west was also at Milparinka. Image: On the Cut Line 1985
About the Name
Milparinka is an Australian Aboriginal phrase associated with water. One suggested meaning is ‘find a native well here’, another ‘water can be found here’. There was certainly semi-permanent water at Milparinka, but there is also good reason to accept that there was ‘a native well here’. However, at this distance in time it is not entirely clear how much of the water resource in the general area was included in the original Milparinka or when the name was first recorded by the European “blow-ins”. Regardless, it would be entirely reasonable to suggest the word or phrase applied the series of waterholes on Evelyn Creek and its tributaries, including those at Depot Glen, Milparinka, and perhaps even as far downstream as Cobham Lake. It would also be entirely reasonable to accept that there was a native well here. Sturt had already used several by the time he reached Depot Glen and located others further north-west during his six months in this area.
If there was a well at Milparinka which had been dug by the Aborigines, it was on the creek flats just north of the town, where Charles Sturt camped on 11 January, 1845 and where, 37 years later, a group of ageing Chinese men established vegetable and fruit growing gardens. Image: The creek flats upstream of Milparinka, 1997
Even though the precise meaning of the expression is not clear, it is obvious from the various accounts of Sturt’s travels in 1844-45 that the water that accumulated in the vicinity of Milparinka was a critical resource for the Aborigines. Those records also tend to confirm that in times of hardship the water was shared by groups who differed quite markedly in general appearance and in some of their their tribal customs.
Background
As far as we know, Charles Sturt, and the fifteen men who were with him in 1844 when he set out from Adelaide on a ‘journey of inland exploration’, were the first Europeans to visit Milparinka. This was another attempt to find the non-existent inland sea, and the one where the exploring party became trapped on a waterhole they named “Depot Glen”. Although they searched for further water sources in various directions they were unsuccessful in finding sufficient for their needs until rain eventually fell.
Most accounts of their journey suggest they became stranded in a desert, but this is an exaggeration. Certainly the country was not sprinkled with water-sources and it was not a European parkland, and while searching in various direction for a way forward Sturt encountered sand-hills, the upper parts of which were bare of vegetation, while the lower two-thirds was poorly vegetated with spinifex and other dry-lands species. What is rarely said is that in between some of those sand-hills Sturt found grassy valleys, tree-lined watercourses, and what he referred to as box, pine and banksia trees. In some places he referred to the trees as a forest, and in others they were scattered in a grassy parkland. Even when he had been stranded for several months some of the watercourses had muddy remnants of waterholes and in other places he found water in native wells and in small pools that lay under rocky overhangs. In at least one of the latter he stated that the water was clear and sparkling even though no rain had fallen for several months. Sturt’s biggest problem was that, with the exception of Depot Glen, the water resources he found were insufficient to support the cavalcade of men, cattle, sheep, horses and dogs that was his exploring party.
Sturt’s personal journal and Daniel George Brock’s equally unguarded account of their experiences contain a wealth of detailed information about aborigines the explorers encountered and the nature of the country that was traversed. This detailed information does not belong in an account of Milparinka, but it does have significance that should not be overlooked. Because of this it is proposed to develop a page within the Far West of New South Wales section of this site to put forward a summary the information recorded by Sturt and Daniel Brock.
To return to the core story of Charles Sturt’s expedition, he and all but one of the party lived to tell the tale of their enforced stay in 1844-45. The one who died was James Poole, who is buried at the foot of a bloodwood tree near Depot Glen. Sturt and others of the party had suffered from scurvy during their enforced stay but only Poole died from the disease. In his personal record of the event Sturt stated the the tree under which Poole was buried was an ‘old banksia’ that stood in the middle of their camp. (Journal of the Central Australian Exploring Expedition,p56) Interestingly that tree, which is now about 12 inches through, was at least 11 inches through when James Poole was buried in its shadow in 1845. It’s diameter has increased by perhaps one inch in a hundred and seventy-odd years… So, of course, when the Europeans moved in, very large numbers of these trees became firewood.
Charles Sturt had camped on the creek flats near Milparinka Waterhole on 11 January, 1845, before moving to the Depot Glen. At that time the waterhole in Evelyn Creek was just under two meters deep. It had a gravelly bottom, there were red river gums and acacias along the banks, and a gidgee scrub back from that. Elsewhere he had found forests of the “banksia” tree and tree-studded grasslands, as well as areas of nothing but sharp rocks which almost crippled his horses.
During the time that Sturt was at Depot Glen, Milparinka waterhole did become almost totally dry, suggesting that it really was a dramatically dry period. Daniel Brock came back to the waterhole and found all that was left was a puddle of water, which he said was “as green as a leek”!! He still made tea with it… Evelyn Creek, by the way, was named by Charles Sturt. He had a brother called Evelyn, and a son by the same name.
Despite the dreadful reputation which this remote part of New South Wales was given by Sturt’s experiences, Europeans moved into the area by the 1860s. A sheep run was established on the overflow of Evelyn Creek at Coally, and another at Sturt’s Depot Glen.
In 1879 or 1880, Duncan M’Bryde, then the owner of the Sturt’s Depot Glen run, was having a bit of a bad time. Once again the country was very dry, but there had been two or three good years, and lots of people were passing along the track which Charles Sturt’s bullock drays and his travelling larder of two hundred sheep had made. These people were on the way to Coopers Creek – that part of south-west Queensland was only then being occupied by Europeans. Others were coming back, sometimes with mobs of sheep which they were droving to markets in Victoria and South Australia. This meant there was quite a bit of traffic – at least for a place in the back-blocks of New South Wales. And these people, it seems, may have been calling in at the homestead and camping on Depot Glen.
Duncan got a bit sick of all this, but thought he might as well cash in on the traffic. To draw people away from his homestead and the much better waterhole at Depot Glen, he built something referred to as an hotel at Milparinka waterhole. It was probably not much of a structure but if it sold “alcoholic refreshments” it was bound to have been a honey-pot. However, there is a suggestion somewhere in the Wilcannia record of the gold-field that the trade was not all that he had hoped for. His solution was to ‘arrange’ for gold to be discovered locally.
Whatever really happened, it was certainly convenient for him that gold was first discovered just a few kilometers up the creek from his hotel and by 1881 Duncan’s grog shanty on the flats just north of Milparinka had evolved into a stone-built structure called ‘The Royal Hotel’. You can still find the site, but all that is left is the ruins of its foundations.
According to Harry Blore (personal communication August 16th, 1987) the New South Wales Government’s Department of Main Roads used a lot of the stone from the Royal Hotel buildings to make the causeway across Evelyn creek. This was in the late 1960s at which time the main road was being relocated to the eastern side of Evelyn Creek to avoid an impasse of two creek crossings on those few occasions when the original route was cut by mud wallows or flood waters.
Even though there was great excitement in Wilcannia when the gold discovery was announced, the field at Mount Poole seems to have been a monumental ‘fizzer’, with numbers of extremely disgruntled diggers returning to Wilcannia. Then someone found gold a little further away, at Mount Browne. Duncan McBryde was probably disgusted – the track to this new locality did not go anywhere near his hotel at Milparinka waterhole. It branched off the Milparinka track at Cobham Lake and from there went straight to Mount Browne. But when the dry weather and the large numbers of people caused what little water there was at Mount Browne to be exhausted, they all moved to Milparinka until it rained. Normally this would have meant that they had abandoned their claims, but the Mining Warden made a special ruling, which meant the claims could not be jumped as long as the weather continued so dry. But while the diggers were sitting on their backsides at Milparinka they were not getting any gold. They began to transport the dirt from Mount Browne to wash it in Milparinka waterhole.
Even when the Warden ‘reserved’ the water for domestic use, meaning that they should not do so, the diggers continued to wash their gold-dirt in Milparinka waterhole. They used the excuse that as the waterhole dried up, it became two separate ones. They said that the Warden had only reserved one of them – so they used the other. With all those people tramping around, with their horses, carts, wheelbarrows, drays and puddling machines, it was not long before Milparinka waterhole started silting up.
Of course, this was most likely just a continuation of what had been going on since the Europeans, with their sheep, cattle and horses arrived. But the diggers certainly did not help.
When it did eventually rain the people went back to Mount Browne, but all the ground they had bared along the banks of the creek added to that already in the waterhole from erosion and the washing of gold-dirt. After a few years the waterhole became too shallow to hold water for more than a few months, and the residents at Milparinka were forced to dig soakage holes into the creek bed. By that time Milparinka had become a town, but a combination of different events brought about its collapse. That the European diggers had helped to make the waterhole useless did not help.
What happened to kill Milparinka?
Three things contributed to the death of Milparinka. The first was the depression of the 1890s. This coincided with a fairly serious drought in Western New South Wales, but at least one theory suggests the depression itself was precipitated by the collapse of the Panama Canal Company, which had borrowed heavily from European and American banks to finance the original construction effort.
Problems with the Canal Company had first emerged in 1888, but the following year the full picture became clear… The company had spent shareholder’s funds of 1,500,000,000 francs and borrowed an undisclosed total from various banks. A French court had ruled that the Company must pass into bankruptcy amid calls for an investigation “into some contracts that rumour hints require light be let in on them ” and America was demanding that France do nothing that could be construed as taking over control of the Company. Interestingly there was also, as early as 1889, talk of war in Europe, and France was reinforcing the border with Belgium in anticipation of a German invasion from that quarter… (Leader, Melbourne, Vic. 9 February 1889, p42) The depression and the accompanying financial crisis, which reached a peak in 1893, was the most severe in Australia’s history. An overheated property boom in the 1880s and its unravelling led to an abrupt collapse of private investment in the pastoral industry and urban development and a sharp pullback in public infrastructure investment. A fall-off in capital inflow from Britain, adverse movements in the terms of trade and drought in 1895 accentuated and prolonged the depression. The 1880s property boom was financed by rapid expansion in bank lending. In addition, many building societies and property finance companies, known as ‘land banks’, sprang up during the 1880s. The increased competition from such new entrants weakened banks’ prudential standards (Merrett 1989). In 1888 the core banks increased interest rates and adopted stricter capital standards, for many financial institutions the damage already done was too severe to be repaired (Boehm 1971). (Reserve Bank of Australia Research Discussion Papers 2001 RDP 2001-07 The 1890s Depression)
Many of the banks in Australia became insolvent and people who had deposited money with them were unable to access their savings. The businesses at Milparinka were no exception. Faced with a rush of depositors withdrawing their savings, the banks had demanded that businesses reduce their overdrafts, the intent being to pull in funds to meet the demand for withdrawals. However many businesses were already struggling on account of the drought and were unable to reduce their overdraft. The result was that the banks did not have enough liquidity to give depositors their money and were therefor insolvent. The collapse of the system put some banks out of business and their customers who could not get their deposited money back were broke. On top of all that, there was a collapse in the wool price, and the drought prevented paddle-steamers from reaching Wilcannia to deliver goods that had already been paid for by the storekeepers.
One knock-on effect for Milparinka was that the town had received a government grant to build a hospital just before the banks collapsed. The hospital committee deposited the grant funds in the London Bank of Australasia at Wilcannia, while they squabbled about where to build the hospital. Meanwhile the bank became insolvent. Eventually the hospital committee got the money back, but they still couldn’t decide where to build the hospital. The government made some suggestions. The committee didn’t agree. Things went back and forth for a few more years. Meanwhile, the people at Tibooburra just built a hospital, and started to use it. People were attracted to Tibooburra and the shops and hotels at Milparinka lost many of their customers.
The next major impact was the First World War – the war that had been simmering in Europe since 1889. Many of the young men who lived at Milparinka volunteered to join the army and go to fight for “The Empire”. People felt differently about England then, and probably also about the Commonwealth of Australia. Apart from that, life at Milparinka was not particularly exciting and the army would pay them £2-2-0 a week… A lot of those young men never came back. Of around fifteen young men who enlisted, at least five died on the battlefield or as a result of wounds received. Another never saw action. He was buried at sea having died after contracting measles on the troopship conveying him to Egypt. Of those who did survive several were incapacitated for life and others just didn’t return to the hardships of the outback.
Another impact of the First World War was a rapid transition to the use of motor trucks and cars. In 1914 passenger transport over most of the far west was by Morrison Brothers coach. However, by 1916 the coaches were being retired. In that year Morrison Brothers replaced at least some horse-drawn coaches with motorised charabanc – an elongated car, usually with at least three rows of seats. They could travel further without stopping than the coaches, and they didn’t need change horses. As long as the coaches needed a horse-change, Milparinka and other places along the coach routes had people waiting around, but when the cars came into use they didn’t stop anywhere for long. (The charabanc (left) is typical of these vehicles, although the image was captured in the vicinity of Jindabyne in the Australian Alps, at least 1,000 kilometers to the east of Milparinka. (Image from the Tyrrell Collection of Kerry & Co photographs – Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney)
The last straw for Milparinka was the breakup of the Kidman Properties in the last years of the 1940s. Mount Poole and Mount Arrowsmith were two of these vast tracts of land and the expiry of the Kidman Pastoral Company’s leases from the Government was followed by the reallocation of that land in much smaller areas to various families then living at or near Milparinka. Compounding the effect of the reallocations was the fact Milparinka was a convenient source of materials that could be reused on the family’s newly acquired properties. At least two complete buildings, perhaps four, were removed from the town together with the galvanized corrugated “iron” roofing from many others.
With the loss of so many inhabitants and the rendering of most non-government structures uninhabitable, Milparinka slowly faded and traffic started to by-pass the town altogether. In the droving days and the days of horse-drawn transport, roads generally followed routes that had been in use for many years. These were quite often the track made by the first European visitors, such as Charles Sturt.
In the vicinity of Milparinka the original road certainly followed the track made by Sturt as he approached the Milparinka waterhole and then towards Depot Glen. As European expansion increased branch tracks developed, but, generally the original track remained in use as long as it served the purpose. However, when cars and trucks had difficulty picking a way through the rough stuff along and through creeks additional tracks developed, usually on higher, drier ground. (Image: The original approach to Milparinka – from the south, 1987 )
Unfortunately for Milparinka, the town was on the wrong side of the creek – getting to the town involved crossing the creek twice – once downstream of the town, and again upstream. Just when the most-used route first bypassed Milparinka is uncertain, but the impact of that change, in conjunction with the break-up of the Kidman properties in the late 1940s probably destroyed what little was left of the town’s viability. Today there is only the one creek crossing, and, apart from the core buildings of the evolving Historical Precinct, the Albert Hotel is the only intact structure from the original town.
Of course there are the ruins, including that of the bank, the schoolhouse, and Baker’s Store together with the sites of numerous houses and outbuildings. Take some time to look at what is on the ground and all around you. It is not very difficult to envisage a town amongst the remnants of structures and jumble of rock, red soil, petrified wood, quartz and duricrust. Nor, after rain, is it impossible to recognise the site of Milparinka Waterhole in the creek-bed below.
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