Henry Bingham Deserves the Highest Praise

The Sydney Morning Herald

10 July 1852

Gentlemen,

We have the very painful duty of reporting, for your publication, that North and South Gundagai was visited, on Thursday and Friday nights last, the 24th and 25th instant, with one of the most terrific floods on record; we have lost about seventy lives, and several houses totally swept away with their inmates.

The two inns at South Gundagai are completely washed away, and the stores at North Gundagai are almost all destroyed, particularly the Victoria Store, kept by Mr. Turnbull.

Henry Bingham, Esq., J.P., the acting coroner, during this fearful calamity deserves the highest praise for his meritorious conduct, in so effectually and powerfully exerting that great moral influence he has over the aboriginal natives, in urging them to cut canoes, and pointing out to them the proper measures to I take, by which means many lives have been I rescued and taken from trees to which they had been washed; that gentleman himself having been most providentally saved amidst the scene of devastation and ruin; his exertions to endeavour to prevent the plunder of property have likewise to be highly commented on.

We are, Gentlemen, Two of the survivors rescued,

F. Horsely. H. Thatcher. Gundagai, June 30.