|
Place
of Many Crows (Part 10) By
Eric Irvin 25
August 1953 Daily Advertiser (Wagga Wagga) |
|
A
brief history of the foundation of Wagga Wagga This is the tenth of a series of
articles to appear daily, tracing the history of the foundation and
early growth of the town of Wagga Wagga. The complete history will
be published in book form later. |
|
William Macleay, of Karaberry, was very prominent in the early life of
Wagga. He was appointed a J.P. on December
18, 1846, when he was described in the N.S.W. Government Gazette as
"William Macleay, Esq., of Morumbidgee."
In 1856 he was elected to the
first N.S.W. Parliament as Member for the Lachlan and Lower Darling. In 1859 he was returned as member
for the Murrumbidgee, and remained its representative until the dissolution
of the Parliament of 1874. (2) John Peter and William Macleay were described
in an election speech made by the latter in Wagga in 1859 as "the
founders of Wagga." (3). J. G. Church, of Uranquinty, was
appointed a J.P. in 1848. In 1858 he owned the Pomingalarna and Collingullile
runs, (4). John Gordon is known to have been
on the Wagga Bench from 1851 to 1856; Robert J. Alleyne
from 1855 to 1866; Walter Clarke from 1856 to 1864; Alexander D. Macleay
from 1856 to 1864 and Donald Mackeller
from1856 to 1859. Police magistrate In 1858 Wagga's
first resident Police Magistrate, Henry Baylls,
was appointed. He was, of course, assisted on the
Bench by resident magistrates. It is interesting to note that
even as late as 1866 the list of these was quite a lengthy one:
William Macleay, John Gordon, John Lupton, Robert J. Alleyne,
John Leitch, Hugh Wallace, Thomas W.
Hammond, Walter O. Windeyer, Alexander McNeil, John Clark, Alexander Burt,
Francis Desailly, James Cochrane, George Forsyth. (5). The name of "Francis Desailly" is certainly a corruption of De Sales or
De Sails, the family which, headed by Leopold F. De Sales, occupied Darbalarra in 1848. Leopold was a J.P., and appeared
on the Wagga Bench with Macleay and Peter in 1848. Wagga's oldest public institution, of
course, is the court house. Next in order are
its public school, erected In 1851 (though Wagga's first school, a
private one, was established in 1849 by F. A. Thompson's brother Edwin);
its hospital, established In 1855; its church (St. John's Church of England)
the foundation stone of which was laid in 1859, and its School or
Arts, established in the same year. In January 1848 the National Board of
Education, which laid the foundation of our present system of State education,
was established, and those men who had the advancement of Wagga at heart
were not slow in taking advantage of the educational facilities which the, new
(Lord Stanley's) system offered. (6). On October 6, 1849 a public meeting
was held at Wagga "for the purpose of adopting the necessary
preliminaries for the establishment of a public school" in
accordance with the regulations issued by the National Board of
Education on May 10, 1848. The meeting appointed local patrons
of the scheme, appointed F. A. Thompson as secretary to the patrons
(or board as they later became) and subscribed £40 towards the cost of
erecting a school to still "the anxiety so generally evinced
by the laboring classes here for the education of
their children." (7). Never
functioned Construction of this school, which was
located on the river bank near the site of the present bridge, was
completed in 1851. It was built of brick with a
shingle roof, and capable of accommodating 70 to 80 children. Unfortunately, this school never
functioned. Wagga was unable to obtain a
teacher, drought and the gold finds depleted the population, and, at
the very time when a teacher was finally obtained tile floods of
1852 destroyed the building. On July 4, 1857, the Wagga correspondent
of the Yass Courier and General Advertiser for the Southern Districts or
N.S.W., reported that: "The flood of 1852, however so
damaged the school house as to make it untenable and drove the school master
abroad, and matters have remained as they were ever since." In 1852 Inspector Wilkins of the
National Board visited Wagga to try and arouse interest in the opening
of a school, and in 1859 tenders were called for the erection of a
new building. This time it was located out of
flood danger in Tarcutta Street, on the site of the present Riverine Club. The building was completed in
I860, and opened the following year. "The first teacher at the school
was Mr. George Robin- son. The average daily attendance ... for the year ended
December, 1861, was 47." (8). It was only a matter of nine
years after this that the new school was found to be overcrowded
and totally unsuited for its purpose. A new site was chosen (that of
the present Demonstration School in Gurwood
Street) and building operations commenced in 1871. The school was opened on April
15, 1872. The total cost of the land and
buildings was £2462, towards which £583 was raised by public
subscription, £1161 was received by way of a grant from the Council
of Education, and £550 from the sale of the old school premises
(part of which are said to have been incorporated in the Riverine
Club building). The deficiency of £ 168 was made up at a later date. Most
commodious There is a note of pride in the
newspaper description of the new school: “The schoolhouse is certainly the most
commodious we have seen out of Sydney. It comprises a boys' school- room
37ft 6in by 20ft, and a boys' classroom 16ft by 13ft. The girls' school and class- rooms
are respectively 31ft by 17ft and 17ft by 15ft. All these rooms are light and airy,
and well supplied with every species of apparatus, from maps and
blackboards to natural history pictures and arithmetical beads,
used in the elaborate business of education." (9). From 1847 to 1855 a percentage of the
fines collected by the Wagga Bench was paid to
the Sydney and Gundagai Benevolent Institutions, which were the
hospitals of their day. It was in March, 1855, that the
first appropriations from the Wagga Bench were paid to the Wagga
Hospital or Benevolent Institution. This high-sounding title disguised
what was in fact a slab hut with a bark roof in Kincaid Street. In 1858, the second annual report
of the Wagga District Hospital (as it had by then become) stated: "Although the balance in the
hands of the treasurer, £276/3/ appears large, it must be remembered
that in the course of the next 12 months the committee will have to erect
suitable premises, as the lease of the present one expires In July,
1859." (10). On October 26, 1858, a meeting of
the committee decided to apply to the Government "for a suitable site of land
for the erection of a commodious hospital during the ensuing
year." (11). The site requested was on Church
Hill, and was granted for church purposes; in its stead the committee was granted
land on the corner of Tarcutta and Johnston Streets, on the site now occupied
by the police superintendent's residence. The Wagga Hospital remained on this
site until the opening of the present Wagga Base Hospital in 1920. References (1) Wagga Express, October 30.
1858. (2) N.S.W. Parliamentary Record.
Seventeenth editon, 1950. (3) Wagga Wagga
Espress and Murrumbidgee Advertiser. June
31, 1859. (4) H. J. E. Gormly. (5) Waugh's
Australian Almanac for 1859. (6) Sydney Morning Herald, January 8,
1848 (7) From a letter to the National Board of Education. September 19.
1840, signed by F. A. Tompson. (8) From a speech in 1931 by the
Minister for Education (William Davies) when he opened an addition to
the Wagga High School, reported in the Daily Advertiser in 1931. and reprinted if its issue of October 10. 1938. (9) Wagga Wagga
Advertiser and Riverina Reporter, April 17. 1872. (10) The Yass Courier and General
Advertiser for the Southern Districts or N.S.W., May 1, 1858,
reprinted from an earlier issue of the Goulburn Chronicle. |