The Wild Reed: Gunnedah

Monday, March 31, 2025

Gunnedah

Australian Sojourn – February-April 2025 • Part 10

Mum and I recently traveled inland from Guruk to the place we were both born, the northwestern New South Wales town of Gunnedah in the heart of Kamilaroi country.

Gunnedah and its surrounding area were originally inhabited by Indigenous Australians who spoke the Kamilaroi (Gamilaraay) language. The area now occupied by the town was settled by Europeans in 1833. Through my maternal grandmother’s family, the Millerds, my family can trace its connection to Gunnedah back to the town’s earliest days. For more about the town’s history and my family’s connection to it, see the previous Wild Reed posts, My “Bone Country” and Journey to Gunnedah.

Above: A memorial to Gambu Ganuurru, “Red Kangaroo,” the Indigenous Australian warrior and leader of the Gunn-e-dar people of the Kamilaroi tribe. After his death in the late 1700s, he was buried in the traditional way inside a carved tree.

When traveling to Gunnedah from Port Macquarie we usual drive across the mountains on the Oxley Highway, which the motoring club Shannons.com describes as a “sinuous ribbon of tarmac linking the Pacific Highway with the New England Highway, snaking its way in spectacular fashion over the Great Dividing Range.”

Yet at the little village of Long Flat (above), about an hour west of Port Macquarie, we discovered that the Oxley Highway was closed for repairs at Mount Seaview. We therefore had to doubleback to the Pacific Highway and take it south to the Hunter Valley which we then took inland to Gunnedah via Maitland, Singleton, Mussellbrook, Murrurundi and Quirindi. Quite a lengthy detour.

Our troubles weren’t over, however, as we encounterd a long delay at one point due to a traffic accident ahead of us, and then had to have our car checked by a mechanic in Taree due to an alarming noise in the area of the driver’s side front wheel when traveling in excess of 100 km. To my ears it sounded like it was related to the suspension.

The mechanic, however, found nothing that would prevent us from continuing our journey, and so that’s what we opted to do.

Above: Mum at the BP Service Center in Quirindi – Friday, March 28, 2025. From the outskirts of Quirandi we took the Kamilaroi Highway to Gunnedah via the locality of Breeza and the village of Curlewis. It poured down rain all the way from Quirindi to Gunnedah, a drive of about an hour’s duration. By the time we reach Mum’s sister Ruth’s home in Gunnedah, the usual five hour journey from Port Macquarie to Gunnedah had turned into an almost twelve hour one.

Above: Mum (right) with her sister Ruth after our longer than usual journey to Gunnedah from Port Macquarie – Friday, March 28, 2025. As always, my dear Aunty Ruth made us feel very welcome in her lovely home.

Above: Ruth’s two Italian Greyhounds, Bella (left) and Betty – Saturday, March 29, 2025.

Above: With Mum and Aunty Ruth – Saturday, March 29, 2025. We’re pictured at Club Gunnedah (formerly the Gunnedah Services Club) where we’d just had a wonderful dinner with friends.

Above: Mum (at right) with longtime friends (from left) Rosemary, Heather and Raelee – Saturday, March 29, 2025.

Above: Standing at right with friends from my school days (from left) Joanne, Di, Lisa, and Louise – Saturday, March 29, 2025.

Above and below: Saturday, March 29 saw the continuation of the rain of the previous night. So much so that areas of Gunnedah and its surrounds experienced flooding. This prevented my childhood friend and neighbor Jillian and her spouse David from getting into town to see Mum and I from their property at Breeza.

In the summer of 2018, Jillian and David visited me in Minneapolis. For some pics of their time there, click here.

Above and below: Gunnedah landmarks – Saturday, March 29, 2025. I got absolutely soaked taking these pictures!

Above: The Convent of the Sisters of Mercy. I was sad to see the pergola on the convent grounds being dismantled. I learnt later, however, that it’s in the process of being rebuilt. As I mentioned in a previous Wild Reed post, I’ve always loved this pergola and, as an adolescent, liked envisioning (daydreaming, I guess you could say) meeting Jesus here! In my “visions,” it was always a dazzlingly bright day, and as Jesus approached to sit with me, I’d smile at the sight of his bare feet on the gravel path. And he’d always smile back.

Above: Silo artwork depicting author and poet Dorothea MacKellar (1885-1968). MacKellar is best known for her poem “My Country,” the second stanza of which is included in this artwork.

The MacKellar family owned several properties in the Gunnedah area, including “Kurrumbede” and “The Rampadells,” and part of the inspiration for “My Country” came from times spent by Dorothea on these properties.

Above: Mum (right) and her cousin Joan – Sunday, March 30, 2025.

Above: Mum (left) and her long time friend Brenda – Sunday, March 30, 2025.

Above: The tops of the Kelvin Hills, in which I hiked in my youth, obscured by clouds – Sunday, March 30, 2025.

Above: Looking out over the waterlogged Breeza Plain – Sunday, March 30, 2025.

Above: The Kelvin Hills, free of clouds – Sunday, March 30, 2025.

Above: Mum (right) and long time family friends Wendy and Gary – Sunday, March 30, 2025.

Above: With Gary and Mum at Authy Ruth’s house.

Above: Bella.

Above: Betty in morning light.

Above: A great find at the Gunnedah Vinnies! – A black swan vase for $6.00.

Right: I won’t be taking my Vinnies find back to the U.S., but it will be kept safe in my late maternal grandmother’s china cabinet which is now in the home of my dear Aunt Ruth. 💗

Postscript: After Mum and I returned to Port Macquarie, Ruth went to the St. Vincent de Paul store in Gunnedah and bought for me the companion vase to this one! Both black swan vases will be waiting for me in Gunnedah upon my eventual (and permanant) return to Australia.

The table upon which I placed my black swan vase to photograph belonged to Mum and Ruth’s parents, Valentine and Olive Sparkes. I remember how, as a child, I would sit at this table in the enclosed back verandah of my grandparents’ home in Little Conadilly Street. It seemed so much bigger then than now!

Above: On Sunday morning, March 30, I sat at the table at Aunty Ruth’s, a table so rich in family history and memories, and did my daily lesson of A Course in Miracles. The lesson (or idea) for that day is one of my favorites: “The light has come.”

“Light” in the Course signifies understanding, an understanding and vision that comes from declaring oneself willing to let go of ego based and thus fear based thinking and to align instead with the thinking and vision of the Divine, of Love. “The light has come” reminds me that divine vision is always here for me to claim and embody. When I take a moment to consciously do so, the light has come. And my life and relationships are better for it.

Above: The beautiful view from Aunty Ruth’s garden.

Above: Mum with longtime family friends Peter and Delores – Sunday, March 30, 2025.

Above and right: At the top of Pensioners Hill is a number of carved tress created “as a remembrance to the Kamilaroi people and their ancestral animal totemic beings.”

Also at Pensioners Hill is a wedge-tailed eagle sculpture (below). Notes the Welcome to Gunnedah website:

[The eagle] who’s wings span over 3 metres, soars over the town’s western lookout. It is the creation of acclaimed metal artist Andrew Whitehead who used scrap metal for this majestic sculpture, complementing the hand-carved eagle seats created by the local woodworker, Dan Birkett. Kaputhin the Eagle is said to be one of the Kamilaroi totems.