INDIGENOUS PLACE NAMES

The Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs Gazette, on 22 November 1928, published an article headed ‘Some Downs Place Names’. It included 36 names of Indigenous origin within 300 km of Warwick including a cluster around the Bunya Mountains, locations as far west as Goondiwindi and Durah, and places very familiar to Warwick residents: Allora, Goomburra, Talgai, Toolburra, Yangan.

Map showing Indigenous places (D. Parsons. Wadingh Wadingh. 2003.)

Almost a century on, all but three of those 36 names remain on the map but the meaning of most of them has been lost. Even in 1928, the Gazette observed that ‘the dialect of the Darling Downs tribe is a closed book’ and that the interpretation of the place names had been ‘lost with the dialect’.

Fortunately, since then, a great deal of research has gone into determining both additional place names of Aboriginal origin and their meaning. Many of them are now included in the Queensland government’s database, Queensland Place Names: https://www.qld.gov.au/environment/land/title/place-names.

Of the five places near Warwick named in the Gazette in 1928, Allora was known even then to have derived from ‘gnarrallah’ or ‘gnallora’, meaning a waterhole or swampy place in reference to the lagoon on Goomburra (Dalrymple) Creek.

Swimming carnival at Dalrymple Creek, Allora Queensland ca. 1908. (Picture: Warwick - Pictures From the Past)

Of Yangan, Queensland Place Names (QPN) today notes that, while the language and dialect of the word have not been identified, the word was used to indicate ‘proceed’ or ‘go away’.

Goomburra is recorded in QPN as indicating either ‘fire black tribe’ (M. French. Conflict on the Condamine. Toowoomba, 1989, p.121) or ‘shield’ (J. Mathew. Two representative tribes of Queensland. London, 1910).

QPN records that Talgai is a Gooneburra language word indicating withered or dead trees, and that the pastoral run, Toolburra, was adopted from the Gidabal language and indicated either tree people (i.e. territory marked by a clump of trees) or spears being thrown. (M. French. Conflict on the Condamine. Toowoomba, 1989, p. 121.)

As for Warwick itself, historian David Parsons gives Waringh Waringh (pronounced Wadingh Wadingh) as the Gidabal name for the area. The name means ‘cold place’ and derives from the story that Warwick is a sacred site which marks the coming of the cold each year. The 1928 Gazette article cited the name given by the Keinjan peoples - Gooragooby. (Today, there are seven different language groups in the Warwick area.)

Other sources of names include Archibald Meston, appointed in 1897 as the Protector of Aborigines for south Queensland. Also a journalist, Meston collected cultural information in the course of fulfilling his role of preventing the mistreatment of Aboriginal people. He recorded Booloogabbie as the name for Canning Downs and Moonganmilly for Mt Sturt. (Meston's 1895 book, Geographic History of Queensland, has been scanned and can be freely downloaded from The University of Queensland's 'espace' library.)

The names of the peaks flanking Cunningham’s Gap also have Indigenous names - Cooyinnirra (Mount Mitchell) and Niamboyoo (Mount Cordeaux). However, as David Parsons points out in his book Wadingh Wadingh (2003) the names of the peaks in the range were assigned by the people living below the range, not by the Warwick people.

Cooyinnirra (left) and Niamboyoo (right) flanking Cunningham's Gap. (Judith Anderson, September 2021)

Other places marked on David Parsons' map above include the Bora Ring site, Tanderoo. Today this is the common name of the ironbark species, Eucalyptus siderophloia, but according to a 1939 report by the Queensland Place Names Committee, the name means 'a place of murder', in reference to an historic massacre of Aboriginals in the area. 

Another is Durikai. Now a State forest reserve, its name derives from the local Aboriginal word, 'duri', for 'dense scrub'. 

In recent years, state jurisdictions and public entities such as the ABC and Australia Post have actively encouraged the adoption of Indigenous names, sometimes alongside the accepted Anglo-Australian terms.

Another important recent initiative is First Languages, Australia's national place names project. This has demonstrated that, while over 60 per cent of Australian place names are of Aboriginal origin, most of their meanings are unknown to the public. One of the project’s drivers is author and historian, Bruce Pascoe. "Indigenous place names hold rich information about our land, histories and cultures. Conversations about these places will increase local understanding of this country we share," he says.

This is the complete list of Downs names mentioned in the 1928 report: Allora, Beebo, Bengalla, Bodumba, Cabarlah, Cambooya, Coolmunda, Cooranga, Cooyar, Cumkillenbah, Durah, Goomburra, Goondiwindi, Gunyan, Jandowae, Jimbour, Jinghi Jinghi, Jondaryan, Kurrawah, Meringandan, Talgai, Toolburra, Umbercollie, Umbiram, Wallumbilla, Wambo, Waroo, Warra, Weranga, Wyaga, Wyreema, Yandilla, Yangan.

EUREKA! GOLD DISCOVERED IN WARWICK

On 19 July 1851, this short statement appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald: “It has been reported to the Government that a successful search has been made for gold in the district of Darling Downs and there was no doubt of a gold field being discovered in that locality”.

This was only five months after the first discovery of payable gold in Australia near Bathurst, NSW, and was made by Mr A.H. McArthur at Lord John’s Swamp on George Leslie’s station, Canning Downs, just outside Warwick.

Samples of the gold-bearing quartz were sent to the Reverend William Branwhite Clarke, an Anglican clergyman and geologist. White was the principal of the King’s School, Parramatta, but his passion was geology. Following verification of the sample by White, prospectors quickly arrived in Warwick and began work, using the abundant water in the Condamine and its tributaries which formed Lord John’s Swamp.

Rev. W.B. Clarke (photograph State Library of NSW)

Community leaders quickly recognised that incentives and support were needed if the district was ultimately the benefit from the population growth and wealth that gold could bring. They therefore responded liberally when Patrick Leslie called a meeting in November that year to establish a fund which would meet the cost of prospectors’ licenses until they could turn a profit and pay for the licenses themselves. There was also a petition sent to the Governor-General, signed by more than 60 landholders, asking that a geologist be sent to the district.

The optimistic view of residents at the time was that Warwick could quickly rival other inland towns in the colony because of its central position, large supply of fresh water, rich alluvial soil and magnificent climate. Their vision was that Warwick was “destined to become the home of hundreds of tradesmen and agriculturists, who will find plenty of employers and consumers among the concourse of gold diggers which such a field as will soon be proved to exist will congregate in this vicinity” (Moreton Bay Courier correspondent in Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 10 December 1861).

Richer alluvial deposits were subsequently discovered on Canal Creek (1863), Talgai (1863-4), Pratten (1864), Lucky Valley (1868), Thane’s Creek (1869), Leyburn (1872), Pikedale (1877) and Palgrave (1877). 

Combined, these finds attracted a significant  influx of gold-seekers and by 1865 there were an estimated 600 European and Chinese miners working the Canal Creek diggings alone. Numbers decreased in 1867 due to a lack of water and the discovery of gold at Gympie, with subsequent finds elsewhere in Central and North Queensland . In addition, few of the hopefuls were adequately equipped, despite the assurance given by the anonymous author of ‘Notes by a Gold Seeker’ in the Moreton Bay Courier (22 November 1851) that the labour involved was “nothing that a boy of fifteen may not do”.

Paying gold was discovered the Elbow Valley area in 1868. The area was proclaimed as the Lucky Valley Mining Field in 1869

(photograph Queensland State Archives)

Discoveries attracted diggers within days of news being published. The Lucky Valley find was first reported on Friday, 5 June, 1868. By the following Monday (8 June), large numbers of prospectors had arrived.

While some mines in the Warwick area were rich (some, like Queenslander, exceptionally so) injudicious management and lack of capital meant that, following early success, miners were generally reduced to surface scratchings and, with little proper developmental work, most ventures were finally abandoned.

Durikai Fossicking Area (photograph ivoradventures)

But the quest for gold goes on today with hopeful prospectors, armed with Fossicker’s Licenses, metal detectors and basic tools, spending weekends in the designated fossicking areas at Thane’s Creek, Talgai State Forest, and Durikai State Forest. 

Information, maps, and regulations are available from:
https://www.qld.gov.au/recreation/activities/areas-facilities/fossicking

PIONEER COACH WORKS and WARWICK COACH WORKS

William Hurford opened his Pioneer Coach Works in Albion Street in 1872.

In 1874, he employed William Flitcroft who had arrived in Australia with his parents in 1863 and, after serving his apprenticeship in Brisbane, travelled to Warwick by bullock wagon. Five years later, when Hurford left Warwick to start another coach works in Toowoomba, he appointed William as his manager. William went on to purchase the business in 1886, earning a reputation for high quality work and going on to win numerous prizes in Brisbane, Tenterfield, Stanthorpe, Allora, and other centres in Southern Queensland.

Flitcrofts Coach Works display at the Warwick Exhibition Building in 1904 (State Library of Queensland).

In the 1890s, Flitcroft was joined by his son John William who eventually became a partner, managing the business when William retired to Brisbane in 1920, following the death of his wife. John William eventually took over the business completely in 1928.

William’s other sons (Seth, William Jnr and Harold) also became coach builders and the business began to do car repairs and body work, the earliest probably being the body for the ambulance van's 70 hp 8 cylinder chassis in 1915. This continued through the 1930s until John William retired to Brisbane in May 1941.

The site was later occupied by Frank Kelly, an autobody builder, who took on Bruce Shelley as an apprentice in 1974. Bruce later bought Frank out and Shelley’s Industries in 2022 continues to make small truck bodies and tray tops. Modifications have been made to the gable at some point in its history and a large shed and shop have since been added to the premises, but parts of the original shed and its roof are still there.

Shelley’s Industries in Albion St still includes remnants of the original 1872 Pioneer Coach works.

William's half brother, John Thomas Flitcroft, was also a coach worker with his own business in Grafton Street.

He was born in Brisbane and probably learnt the coach building trade working from William in Warwick in the mid to late 1880s. In July 1909, he bought the Warwick Coach Works in Grafton St from R. Johnson, making it clear in advertisement in the Warwick Daily that his business had no connection with the Albion St coach works with the Flitcroft name.

Warwick Coach Works, Grafton St, c. 1923 (State Library of Queensland)

Within four months of his purchasing Johnson’s business, much of the Warwick Coach Works was destroyed as the result of a fire in Huxley’s General Store next door, but John Thomas continued to operate his business, changing the name to the Warwick Coach Factory in 1923. The following year, he moved into the motor car business and became an agent for Nash cars.

John Thomas died suddenly in 1926 but the business continued to operate under the Flitcroft name as J. T. Flitcroft Motor Service Ltd and J. T. Flitcroft Motor Garage until 1929. The business was acquired by Wilson Brothers in 1936.

In addition to his coach building business, William Flitcroft owned a 50-acre farm (Lots 320 and 311) at Rosenthal which he called ‘Halliwell’ after his ancestral village in Lancashire which is now a residential area of Bolton, Greater Manchester. South of Locke and Cleary Streets, it was near the present-day Flitcroft Street and the Warwick TAFE.

The collection of the Warwick and District Historical Society includes a Flitcroft sulky which was handsomely dressed and displayed at Pringle Cottage for the 2021 Jumpers & Jazz Festival. The harness on the horse is over 110 years old.

The information for this story comes principally from Pamela Fisher whose great-grandfather, Jim Rigby, worked as a coach builder at the Pioneer Coach Works in the 1910s.

Blackie – Warwick’s canine character

Blackie was Warwick Railway Station’s resident dog and a ‘Legend of the Line’.

The story goes that a black female dog in very poor shape turned up at the East Warwick station one day in the late 1950s and sat, looking appealingly up at the shunt loco crew.

That was the beginning of the legend.

At that time, there were staff on duty at the railway station 24 hours a day, including Sundays, and before long the dog was familiar to everyone and was named Blackie.

Her coat soon took on a new sheen with all the food supplied by drivers, firemen, shunters and other railway staff. Everybody brought her special treats: milk, fresh meat, cooked meat, cakes and biscuits – even the bone from the Sunday lamb roast.

Blackie quickly adapted to railway procedure. She got to know that, when the stationmaster walked to a shunt engine, this signalled a short return trip to Mill Hill station and would jump on board for the ride. She would never jump on for any other trips – she made her home in the tender of a PB15 shunt engine* (usually No. 444 – one of two PB15s now in the Workshops Rail Museum in Ipswich).

No. 444 at the Workshops Rail Museum in Ipswich

When the tender was full, Blackie stayed on top of the coal, settling on the floor as the coal level reduced and never getting in the way while coal was being shovelled. If the day was rainy or cold, she would curl up under the seat of the fireman or driver and learned to stay beside the reversing lever.

As the years went by, age began to catch up with Blackie. She developed arthritis and could no longer jump up or down from the loco. If the driver or fireman felt a paw, or heard a whimper, it was Blackie – she needed to go to the ‘doggy loo’. The loco was stopped, she was helped down and then helped back on. It did not matter how busy the shunt was, Blackie was given priority.

Towards the end of the 1960s, Blackie died and was buried in what was once the rose garden between the station and Lyons Street under a headstone reading: ‘Blackie. A faithful friend to all’. Blackie's death even prompted this tribute in verse from Allan Collett: Rest in peace little friend/ You were faithful to the end/ Loved by all that drove the train/ Hope to see your face again.

Blackie's headstone (5 January 2022. Photo by David Owens)

In 2017, in preparation for the centenary of the infamous egg-throwing incident at the Warwick station**, the garden was upgraded by the Southern Downs Regional Council and Queensland Rail, but Blackie’s headstone was preserved and returned to its original position in time for the 18 November celebration. 

Although dwarfed by the much grander monument to the egg incident, Blackie's headstone remains as an affectionate tribute to a dog who was known and cared for by so many in the Warwick community.

 

But Blackie’s story did not end there - she had pups!

The Barr family remember one of a 1960s litter being brought home from the station and named Darlin’ Dog. Like her mother, she was a devoted member of the family who travelled wherever they went, and became a wonderful mother to her own litter of pups. She lived to the age of 13 years.

Blackie's daughter, Darlin' Dog

Warwick’s Railway Stations

Railway lines first reached Warwick in December 1870 and the first Warwick railway station opened on 10 January the following year. Because the station was located on the northern side of the Condamine, its name was changed to Mill Hill in 1888 after a second station was opened at East Warwick on 2 January 1888.

Plans to construct the new sandstone station and goods shed as well as a turntable and yards had begun two years previously. By 1911, there were 15 locomotives based in Warwick with up to 50 trains a day arriving and departing; by 1926 there were some 300 people employed by the railway and as many as 60 trains ran each day. However, Warwick’s role declined from 1953 when the longer range of diesel engines meant that the depot was no longer required. The station building and goods shed have survived and were added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 24 September 1999. Local enthusiasts have restored part of the locomotive roundhouse.

Mill Hill station closed on 30 May 1975; the station and goods shed of the East Warwick station in Lyons St continue to operate.

Warwick Railway Station (QSA Item 435753)

*The first PB15 class engine was delivered in December 1899. They were designed specifically for Queensland Railways and more than 200 were manufactured by different companies including Walker’s in Maryborough and the Toowoomba Foundry. The P designated ‘passenger locomotive’; the B referred to the earlier B15 class which was very similar. #444 was produced in 1908.

**On 29 November 1917, Warwick’s railway station gained worldwide publicity when an egg was thrown at the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, while he was speaking on the platform. The incident was notorious because the Warwick constable refused to arrest the perpetrator on the grounds that federal law had no jurisdiction within the State. The incident led directly to the establishment of the Commonwealth Police Force (now Australian Federal Police).

Centennial plaque officially unveiled by David Littleproud MP on behalf of the 

Prime Minister of Australia on 18 November 2017. (Photo by David Owens, 5 January 2022)

Janet Thelma (‘Jennie’) Harrington – Warwick’s iconic recycler

Jennie on her bike with her collection of cans in 1983 (Photographer unknown)

Over the years, many Warwick residents have been marginalised simply because they were different - people like Harold ‘Lift your feet’ Locke who collected coal along the railway tracks in a sugarbag; Harry ‘Spitter’ Free who started every day at Lynam’s Milk Bar with a Bex and a Coke; the so-called Dollar Man (his family name was Dollar) with his small dog. At best, they were tolerated, but tended to be avoided by adults, feared by children, and were often taunted, even assaulted.

Happily, there is one extraordinary person who, despite the treatment meted out to her, remained kind and generous and was widely respected for her honesty – Janet Thelma (‘Jennie’) Harrington, affectionately known as ‘The Can Lady’.

Born in Cairns in 1938, Jennie (she always insisted on that spelling) was adopted from a Brisbane orphanage by Ada and Allister Pearce of Dragon St. During her time with the Pearces and their other adopted child, Peter Spreadborough/Pearce, she attended Central School and underwent surgery to correct a cleft palate. After leaving school, she worked in the kitchen at St Catherine’s Anglican Girls School.

After her adoptive father died in 1961, followed in April 1962 by her adoptive mother, Jennie married elderly widower, Francis James (‘Poppy’) Harrington, who had lived alone since the death of his first wife, Harriet, in 1949. Jennie was just 29 when ‘Poppy’ died at the age of 92 on 22 May 1968 but she never remarried and never forgot him, posting a large ‘In Memoriam’ notice in the Warwick Daily News every year on the anniversary of his death and continuing to live in the simple home they shared at 4 William St.

'Poppy' Harrington's headstone in the Warwick Cemetery reads: 'In loving memory of my Poppy, 

Francis James Harrington, died 22nd May 1968 aged 92 years. Remembered by his wife Janet'.

Jennie adored babies and had dearly wanted children of her own, but instead gave thoughtful gifts to new mothers, remembered local children’s birthdays, and would regularly go to the orphanage in Brisbane at Christmas to make sure the children received presents. She knew what it was like not to receive gifts. 

She was able to afford this by collecting aluminium cans, bottles and newspapers. (Cans were plentiful beside highways until the Clean Up Australia campaign began in 1989 and, as recently as 2014, Queensland was officially the worst State in Australia for littering rural highways, with over 53 items of rubbish per square kilometre.)

Her dedicated recycling efforts also enabled her to buy the small antiques, porcelain figurines, dolls and fine china that she enjoyed collecting. It also meant she could attend performances of ballroom dancing and classical ballet, both of which she loved. She even travelled to Sydney one year to see Swan Lake.

Jennie became a familiar sight as she cycled around the city, her bike festooned with bags of cans, and was known to pedal as far as Toowoomba. However, when she acquired a car, she travelled throughout the district – she was once spotted at Cunningham’s Gap, laying her collection of cans on the road and driving over them to crush them. She certainly enjoyed the freedom the car gave her although on one memorable occasion, when she was pulled over for not indicating, she responded indignantly that she’d been told the car was automatic! 

Jennie often attended weddings and funerals, slipping quietly into the back of the church for the service and even attending wakes, but regrettably, she was not always well treated. Her hip was broken when she was knocked from her bike by a group of drunken men; her most precious possession (a photograph of her father) was lost when thieves broke into her home; and, on her 80^th birthday, she learned that her affairs had been placed under the control of the Public Trustee and that her home and all possessions had been sold without her knowledge.

While her William St home was demolished, some 40 of her porcelain dolls were purchased by a local resident and are now treasured by a new generation of collectors.

Jennie's genuine Shirley Temple doll, one of her treasured collection of porcelain dolls.

Throughout her life, those who took the time to know Jennie treated her with kindness and understanding – a local hairdressing salon washed her hair each week for just $2.00; the Fire Brigade regularly checked on her and did tasks such as changing light bulbs; the boys from a local butcher shop taught her to drive; a service station gave her bacon and eggs for breakfast in exchange for her hosing their driveway; one person made dresses for her, others gave her lifts, and the community took up a collection to purchase a disability scooter for her when she became less mobile. 

The level of public concern and affection for Jennie was evident when she was hospitalised in 2015. When the hospital was unable to find a local care placement for her in December that year, she was taken to a nursing home in Millmerran. The then 77-year-old had been such a familiar and loved figure in town that concerned residents called for her to be brought ‘home’. She returned to Warwick in July 2016 to live at Akooramak Care of Older Persons, the service owned and operated by the Warwick community since its establishment by The Warwick Benevolent Society in 1876 – the year her beloved ‘Poppy’ was born. 

Jennie in residence at Akooramak (The Courier-Mail, 16 July 2016, photo by Jonno Colfs)

Jennie continues to live at Akooramak where friends such as Vince Hemmings have visited her with gifts of her favourite chocolates (and a Pepsi!). Jennie has also been able to make contact with her birth mother's sister and her family, living in Collinsville.

‘Lost Faces’ member, Jackie Hawthorne Salske, summed up the feelings of many when she commented: “The dear Lord had better have a brand new bike ready for Jennie when she arrives so she can carry on collecting bottles and cans in Heaven”.

The story above has been drawn from the recollections posted by literally hundreds of members of Lost Faces of Warwick Facebook group in early 2020, as well as from public records and newspaper stories such as the one below, published in 1983.