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Milparinka
Milparinka is a small settlement in north west New South Wales, located roughly 250 kilometres north of Broken Hill on the Silver City Highway with a population of ten.
In 1844 Charles Sturt's expedition was stranded for 6 months due to a lack of supplies nearby at Preservation Creek. Gold was discovered in the 1870s and the population peaked at 3000.
Milparinka was the administrative centre, with a peak population of maybe 500, for the Far West of New South Wales, long before Broken Hill was established, and certainly before the Commonwealth of Australia became a reality. We are very very fortunate that there was a man in the town who had a vision, and the forethought to record many things for future generations. That man was Thomas Wakefield Chambers. He was the publisher of a newspaper - The Sturt Recorder, Tibooburra and Mount Browne Advertiser - and his first editorial contained something which set the tone and through that, the incredible value of his journalistic work. In one of his first editorials he wrote "the truth must be told, even though the heavens should fall..." Through the pages of his newspaper he did tell the truth, and he probably suffered far more than he deserved for so doing.
At the time. the Far West of New South Wales was a frontier, in many ways similar to the American "Wild West". It was certainly wild, but there was also an element of respect for the law which Hollywood would have us believe was less well developed in the American west. Milparinka was the main town - the Tombstone or Tucson - of Australia's frontier. In fact Wyatt Earp was doing his thing in Tombstone the year Milparinka was established, and the "Gunfight at the OK Corral" took place on 26 October 1881, while George Blore was building the Albert Hotel at Milparinka.
In this environment people did happen to be murdered, dynamite stores blew up, people died of thirst in the desert, and others got a 'damn good thrashing' or a few days 'durance vile' as Thomas Wakefield Chambers would have called it - in the lock-up. The coaches of Cobb and Co, and of Morrison Brothers plied the tracks between Wilcannia, Bourke, Milparinka, Tibooburra, and Mount Browne. Eventually they would also link up with Broken Hill, two hundred and fifty kilometres to the south. In 1916, when the last of the coaches ran from Milparinka to Cobar, then the railhead on the line west from Sydney.
From the first there were wayside inns along the tracks from Wilcannia. They had ordinary names like the Dry Lake Hotel, Sanders', the Morden Arms, Maxwells and the Cobham Lake Hotel, and more exotic ones like Packsaddle, Kayrunnera and Kandie. There are some marvellous accounts of travel between these hotels, and of the hardships and the funny times - like the day the fresh horses got sick of waiting for the coach and wandered off along the track to meet it....
The 'Ghans' plied those same tracks leading camel strings loaded with sacks of onions and potatoes, rolls of calico and of other woven cloths, boxes of tinned beef, lobster (yes - lobster!), tea, Bovril, and some of the products of Henri Nestlé - later to become the huge international conglomerate that we know as Nestlé's.
Harry Blore had some things to tell about those men - or at least as he remembered them in the 1920s. Thomas Wakefield Chambers also records much about them, and of course the storekeepers at Milparinka and Tibooburra were very reliant upon them. They were mostly contracted through head men in Wilcannia, Bourke and (later) Broken Hill. Some even came through form Beltana in South Australia.
The storekeepers at Milparinka were also very reliant upon the whims of the Darling River three hundred or so kilometres east of them. Most of their supplies came up that river by paddle-steamer to Wilcannia. From there the Ghans picked up and brought the wares through the desert country to Milparinka. There are marvellous stories about life and travel by paddle-steamer, and some really interesting lists of their cargoes.
And finally at Milparinka were the Chinese. These men grew vegetables from the very beginning, and when the last of those hardy pioneers died in about 1916, he was most likely buried alongside those of his race who had gone before him, adjacent to the Europeans in Milparinka Cemetery. Sadly there is no headstone or monument to record his passing.
Albert Hotel
Albert Hotel Milparinka circa 1889
Royal Standard Hotel
Royal Standard Hotel Milparinka circa 1889
Heuzenroeder Store
Heuzenroeders Store circa 1889
Created on 08/10/2008 02:18 AM by Rod
Updated on 08/10/2008 02:23 AM by Rod
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