Mudgee: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 04:07, 1 January 2007
Mudgee is a town in central New South Wales, Australia. It is located in the broad fertile Cudgegong River valley 261 kilometres north west of Sydney. As of 2004, Mudgee is the centre of the Mid-Western Regional Council Local Government Area with a population of 24,000 (2006 est). The town itself has about 10,000 inhabitants (2006 est). Average temperatures range between 15 and 40 degrees Celsius in the summer (December - February) and -3 and 15 degrees Celsius in the winter (June-August). The average annual rainfall is 650 mm.
Economy
The Mudgee district is well known for its fine wine. Mudgee has developed as a wine producing region and is a popular destination for people to visit the forty wineries operating in the Mudgee district. Other rural produce includes cattle, sheep, wheat, lucerne, olives, fruit, tomatoes, corn, honey and dairy products.
The Ulan coal mines are in the district. During the 19th century, the area was a major goldmining area and the district also produces marble, pottery clays, shale and dolomite. The tourism industry is also a growing industry based largely on the wineries. A laboratory was established in 1987 to test meat for pesticide residues.
History
Early history to 1850
The Wiradjuri Aborigines lived in the area before European settlement. The name Mudgee is derived from the Wiradjuri term Moothi meaning "Nest in the Hills". James Blackman was the first European settler to cross the Cudgegong River in 1821 followed quickly by Lieutenant William Lawson who was then commandant of Bathurst. Lawson would later take up 6,000 acres (24 km²) in the area.
George and Henry Cox, sons of William Cox, were the first settlers on the Cudgegong River when they established the Menah run, 3 kilometres north of the current town. The European settlers were soon in conflict with the Wiradjuri over a range of issues including killing of livestock and animals such as kangaroos and possums which were major food sources for the Wiradjuri. Martial law was declared in 1824 leading to a significant reduction in the population of the Wiradjuri.
While the site of Mudgee was surveyed for a village in 1823, Menah was the original settlement having a police station and a lock up by 1833. Robert Hoddle designed the village which was gazetted in 1838. John Blackman built a slab hut, the first dewlling in Mudgee and its general store. By 1841, there were 36 dwellings, three hotels, a hospital, a post office, two stores and an Anglican church. The police station moved from Menah in the mid-1840s while an Anglican school was established in that decade as well.
History 1850 to present
In 1851, the population of Mudgee was 200. However, the population exploded as the discovery of gold in nearby Hargraves by Edward Hargraves led to a gold rush in New South Wales. While no gold was found in Mudgee itself, the town prospered as gold was discovered in nearby towns such as Gulgong, Hill End and Windeyer temporarily reached populations of 20,000. Mudgee was a centre for the local goldfields and grew rapidly as a result.
Mudgee was declared as a municipality in 1860 making it the second oldest municipality west of the Great Dividing Range with a population of 1500 in 1861. A public school was built in the 1850s together with the present Catholic and Anglican churches and a Methodist and Presbyterian church. A new police station, courthouse, Mechanics Institute and a town hall were built in the 1860s. There were four coach factories operating in Mudgee to cater for the demand of the nearby goldfields. The National Trust of Australia has a number of these buildings registered including the Mudgee Museum (formerly the Colonial Inn), the Catholic presbytery, the court house, the police station and the Anglican Church.
One of the gold miners attracted to the Mudgee district was Niels Peter Larsen who married Louisa Albury in Mudgee in 1866. They had a child, leading Australian poet Henry Lawson in Grenfell in 1867 and changed their names to Peter and Louisa Lawson. By the birth of their third child, they moved to a selection at Pipeclay (now Eurunderee) 8 kilometres north of Mudgee. Louisa Lawson's vigorous lobbying led to the establishment of the slab-and-bark Eurunderee Public School in 1876 with Henry Lawson attending the school for the first time aged nine. He would later write about the school in his poem "The Old Bark School". Lawson would later attend St. Matthews Central School, Mudgee before his progressively worsening deafness leading to him leaving school at the age of 14. Lawson would live in the Mudgee district until the age of 15 and many of his stories were written about the district.
As the gold mines petered out in the latter half of the 19th century, Mudgee was sustained by the strength of its wool industry as well as the nascent wine industry established by a German immigrant, Adam Roth, in the 1850s. The arrival of the railway in 1884 further boosted the towns agricultural industries. The Wallaby Track Drive Tour visits various sites associated with Lawson including the old Eurundee Public School, the Henry Lawson memorial, the Budgee Budgee Inn, Sapling Gully, Golden Gully and the Albury Pub which was owned by Lawson's grandfather.
Famous Mudgeeans
- Darrell Hair - born in Mudgee, now living in Lincoln UK, a controversial cricket umpire.
- Ken Sutcliffe - born in Mudgee, Australian Television Personality.
- Jamie Fitzgerald - Played 71 NRL games with the North Sydney bears, Saint George Illawarra Dragons, South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Newcastle Knights.