The small New South Wales town of Werris Creek, near Tamworth and north of Quirindi, is recognised as the first railway town in Australia. A railway station, designed by the NSW railway engineer John Whitton, was built there in 1879. It was moved the next year to its present location in 1880, at the junction of the Main North railway line to Armidale and Moree. Located 411 km from Sydney at the entrance to the Liverpool Plains, at the 2011 census, Werris Creek had a population of 1,437.
The story of the railway line across Parry Shire began in the early 1870s when the construction of the Great Northern Line had stalled at the foot of the Liverpool Plains. From 1876 the line pressed on over the range and down onto the plains below. It was in 1877 that the parliament of Sydney decided to build a branch line from the major rail trunk in the direction of Gunnedah. The branch was to start in an open paddock owned by John Single near Werris Creek, and thus the town of Werris Creek had its beginning. It was the first railway town in New South Wales starting from a broad-acre site and developing exclusively to service the railways.
It remained a railway town for the next century and a quarter, with railway work being the overwhelming form of employment. The original station at Werris Creek was about half a kilometer south of the current junction. However, with the opening of the line to Gunnedah and the splitting of the mail trains from Newcastle at Werris creek, it was necessary to have a station nearer to the actual branching line. The platform of the new station was finished in 1879. From the new platform was to rise a magnificent station complex. It was to be a remarkable building that could easily grace a city, a monument to railway confidence and bureaucratic power, yet, incongruously, a lonely citadel in the middle of the bush. The station consisted of a refreshment room and station building. On completion of these two buildings in 1885, a town began to develop on the eastern side of the railway line.
In 1925, the office of the District Superintendent of Railways was moved from Murrurundi to Werris Creek and a second story was added to the station building to accommodate new staff. Werris Creek remained an important rail junction until the advent of diesel and electric trains in the 1960s. Together with the decline in rail travel and freight, and the economic rationalising of the 1980s and 1990s, the town of Werris Creek lost much of its importance as a railway hub.
Werris Creek was a purpose-built rail centre and as such, claims to be Australia's first specific railway town. It dates to 1877 when the NSW Government decided that the Great Northern Line needed a depot and junction from where branches would run to the west and north-west, thus helping to open up and serve the rich pastoral areas further inland. Werris Creek became a major junction, with the Main Northern, Mungindi and Binnaway lines all intersecting in the region. It was the first, and remains the last, railway town in New South Wales. In 1913, a locomotive depot opened with a roundhouse built in 1920.
An isolated bushland spot was chosen where the northern line at that time cut through George Single's paddock, halfway between Quirindi and Tamworth. This was called Werris Creek, a variation on the Aboriginal name for the district, Weia Weia, meaning "stop here, rest awhile". The town became the busiest rural freight base in the state as well as a key passenger junction as goods and people alike joined or left the main Sydney line destined to or coming from places like Gunnedah, Narrabri, Moree and many similar settlements that were emerging.
By the early 1880s a magnificent railway station had appeared at Werris Creek. The NSW State Rail Authority Heritage Unit described it as "a remarkable building that could easily grace a city ...yet, incongruously, a lonely citadel in the middle of the bush". It boasted an impressive refreshment room in the Victorian Free Classical style built of rich, red bricks in tuck-pointed Flemish bond with crisp stucco embellishments, pronounced cornices with paired brackets and moulded, grouped windows. A grand (red) cedar staircase led to a floor of bedrooms for those travellers who had time to sleep between connections. It was "not unlike a city bank...until it was covered with its first of many layers of soot". The late 1880s heritage-listed station building was designed by John Whitton and is the third largest in New South Wales.
In 1896 a locomotive shed formerly in use in Gunnedah was erected opposite the station. In 1917, a 10 stall roundhouse was erected one kilometre south of the station, with a further five stalls added in 1920. In November 1954, the 23-metre turntable was replaced by a 32-metre example to allow 60 class locomotives to be turned.
Eventually a cross-country line was built from Binnaway near Coonabarabran to Werris Creek, thus linking the northern line to both the Main Western and Main Southern, lines. The population soared to 2,500 as workers flocked to staff and service the countless trains that came and went day and night and Werris Creek became known as the "town that never sleeps".
For approximately 70 years Werris Creek was the largest railway centre in northern New South Wales, the depot alone employing 800 people. From the 1970s, the railway began to decline, but it still remains an important part of the network, with Pacific National still using the depot. The introduction of diesel locomotives and centralisation of the rail system led to the demise of the complex's importance. The jobs of tradesmen servicing steam trains disappeared. The population halved as rail jobs fell from 800 to 100. Town morale sank as its heart and soul began to disappear. Even though passenger and freight trains still passed through Werris Creek, as they still do, it seemed destined to become yet another country town fading into oblivion.
The Australian Railway Monument near the station and part of the station building has been opened as a railway museum. A historic display depicts the history of Werris Creek as the first railway town in Australia from the age of steam through to the modern day diesel.
Werris Creek is still served by the daily NSW TrainLink Xplorer service to and from Sydney Central which amalgamates/divides at the station, half the train to and from Armidale, the other half to and from Moree. The train to Armidale/Moree divides at 3:34pm and the train to Sydney amalgamates at 11:29am.
In 1989 a committee led by Chris Holley – a former porter, shunter, guard and controller, strongly supported by a band of fellow retired railmen such as veteran yard master Les Brown – vowed that Werris Creek would not die. Their determination led to the acceptance of a plan envisaged by Dr Stuart Sharp, of the former NSW State Rail Authority Heritage Unit, involving creation of an Australian Railway Monument. The 3-metre high stainless steel sculptures this comprises depict a fettler, shunter and firemen, a signalman, gatekeeper and flag lady. The sculptor is Dominique Sutton who also worked on Sydney Olympic Park. They look down on a specially landscaped amphitheatre beside the railway station. Memorial walls complement the amphitheatre and contain more than 2,400 names of all those railway people who had lost their lives either at work or from injuries received at work.
While funding came principally from the NSW Government ($1.3m), some 40 townsfolk – mostly former railway men and women pledged themselves as volunteers to run the complex. It opened on 1 October 2005 as the Australian Railway Monument and the Rail Journeys Museum and since has averaged more than 10,000 visitors per annum. The museum contains a wide range of memorabilia depicting country railways' past and in the future aims to present a comprehensive account of Australia's railway history. An historic display depicts the history of Werris Creek as the first railway town in Australia from the age of steam through to the modern day diesel.
The area was originally occupied by the Gamilaraay people. "Werris" appears to derive from an Aboriginal word first written as "Weia Weia", but the exact meaning is not known. There is a similar aboriginal word pronounced "werai", which means "look out", which might be related, because there are prominent hills in the area. In earlier years, Werris was written in a variety of ways, including Werres, Werries and Weery's.
The first European settlers came to the area in the 1830s and the Weia Weia Creek Station was established by the Reverend Francis Vidal around 1841. By the 1870s, there were 20 pastoral families occupying the valley and, on the eastern side of the present townsite, was Summer Hill station, belonging to John Single, after whom the main street is named. Werris Creek Post Office opened on 1 January 1878.
On 2 October 2013 Werris Creek was slated to be the location for a film, Unbroken, written by the Coen brothers, and directed by Angelina Jolie.
Design by W3layouts
