"BACK TO NYNGAN" Foreward from the “Back to Nyngan” Week, 24-29th September 1928 Memorial Magazine If only the history of Nyngan is to be written, the task is simple and easy. The Western Railway, being built out to Bourke, reached the Bogan River in 1883, and as it was thought that this would remain the terminus for some time, a township sprang up quickly. This was called Nyngan. It was a native name, and it had been applied to the district since very early times. In Well's Geographical Dictionary of 1848 there is the following line: NYENGEN.-In the district of Wellington, N.S.W., on the River Bogan. But if one is to give a fuller history of the district, one must go back a long way before 1883, and move out 16 miles to the north-east, to where there is to-day nothing but a few heaps of bricks. Here, from early in the forties until the middle 'eighties, there flourished the little town of Canonbar - or, as it was often spelled, Canonba. Canonbar was on the direct route to the far West. When the pioneers came out through the Blue Mountains, nearly one hundred years ago, and traversed these seemingly endless saltbush plains, they found a region well adapted to the raising of cattle and, a little later, sheep. The acquisition of vast stations, for use as grazing areas, followed with remarkable rapidity, and before the nineteenth century was half gone primitive homesteads, with numerous flocks and herds, were scattered far over the West, right out to the Darling, and beyond. To this generation of users of motor cars and aeroplanes, the means of communication then seemed incredibly slow. The railway was still a quarter of a century away. Stage coaches could convey mails and passengers at perhaps ten miles per hour, but household equipment and supplies came slowly and painfully from the coast by teams of toiling bullocks and horses. The people of the far West got supplies by two routes - the long, weary trek to the coast of New South Wales, or by steamer from Adelaide up the Darling. Few people of to-day know that Bourke was once a port of entry for goods from abroad. At Bourke there was a Customs House and Customs officers and bonded stores. Half a dozen paddle-wheel steamers have been seen at Bourke at one time. It is an absolute fact that there once occurred there, in the centre of Australia, a strike of wharf-labourers! Bourke was a distributing centre for the far West and part of the middle West. The road from Sydney to Bourke came along the upper reaches of the Macquarie and crossed the river where Warren is now. Then it followed Duck Creek to the rich and famous station of Canonbar: This was a favourite halting place for the teams and coaches and so, at a point near the homestead, on Duck Creek, there grew up a little town of hotelkeepers and tradesmen to serve the needs of travellers. For 30 years Canonbar grew and flourished, keeping pace with the back-blocks traffic of the developing colony. At this place, in the early 'eighties, there were about four hotels, three or four banks, various stores, and tradesmen, a police station, a telegraph and money-order office, and representatives of churches. To-day, except for a crumbling wall or two, there is little evidence that the place ever knew human occupation. The explanation is the Western Railway. It passed some 15 miles south of Canonbar, and where it crossed the Bogan it formed the township of Nyngan. To paraphrase a popular song, Nyngan stole Canonbar's heart away. For a little while Nyngan was the terminus of the Western Railway. All the horse-drawn traffic of the West naturally converged on that point. There was an extraordinary mushroom-like growth of hotels and stores on the banks of the Bogan. The road through Canonbar was no longer the beaten track between east and west. To put it in a sentence, Canonbar populace, goods and public institutions-moved to Nyngan. This was in 1883. A few people hung around the deserted village, but before the end of that decade Canonbar was practically empty. The different effect of railway competition upon Warren and Canonbar is remarkable. Both were pastoral centres and stopping places on the great coaching route. The railway passed 12 miles south of Warren and 15 miles south of Canonbar. Warren went on living and growing, and in time a branch railway was built in from the main line. But Canonbar simply crumpled up and most of its people were among the first residents of Warren. While it was the terminus of the Western Railway Nyngan flourished mightily. But very soon the line was built on to Bourke, and then many people lost faith in Nyngan, and there was a serious exodus of business folk and considerable depression. As a set-off to that, however, there was the development of Cobar, 80 miles away, and Nyngan was the starting-point for Cobar. For years - long before the branch railway was built out from Nyngan to Cobar in the 'nineties - the Cobar traffic passing through Nyngan was an important factor in the growth of the town's business and solidity. But Nyngan has reached its present condition - "one of the soundest towns in the west" - through no adventitious aids. It has become established, as it is to-day, through the natural wealth of the great district which surrounds it. The copper ore which made of Cobar once a flourishing city is no longer profitable to work and Cobar, compared with its former glory, is now faded and shrunken - almost a ghost town. Recent visitors say that Cobar is "picking up again," the result of the growth of the pastoral and dairying industries round about it-but the old Collar is utterly gone. But the passing of the Cobar mines and their huge traffic through Nyngan has not affected Nyngan perceptibly. It has pinned its faith to the pastoral industry and it has no fear for the future. Since it is no older than the railway which gave it being, and was a "nominated town," as distinct from the great majority of towns which just sprang up of their own free will beside some coach route or cattle track, Nyngan has been laid out to a careful plan. Its modern buildings, its neat tree-shaded streets, its excellent public services, the obvious comfort in which its 1500 people live, its pleasant climate and its faith in the future of these rich western plains-all these things give the casual visitor a feeling that here, when the West shall have come into its own, there lies a future metropolis. At present it takes 16 hours of continuous train travelling to reach the Coast at Sydney, but an aeroplane can make the journey in four hours. These western plains are so flat that an aeroplane can land almost anywhere with perfect safety. The natural aerodrome near Nyngan Railway Station is among the best in the State. Many Nyngan people have wireless receivers. They can sit in their homes on Saturday afternoons and hear all sports broadcast, or the latest news read out, from one to two days before the Sydney newspapers can reach them. When the aerial service is established - which must be soon a Nyngan man can leave for Sydney in the morning, put in two or three hours in the metropolis, and return home before dark. Aviation and wireless are going to mean big things for Nyngan and other towns of the interior.