PASSING DOWN THEIR ACRES: The Good Farmers of Gowrie

Gowrie was well-placed to become a stopping-off station for travellers heading to the emerging inland town of Tamworth. Certainly, there was a vision, with land set aside for a school, teacher's accommodation and two churches at the southern end and a church, cemetery, and store on the northern border. In the early years of settlement, villages often grew around half-way houses, providing food and lodging for travellers on exhausting journeys. The strong influence of Methodists in this community may have stood in the way of such an establishment, with its service of alcohol. Whatever the reason, Gowrie was to remain a close-knit farming community within a scattering of rural properties. Passing Down Their Acres is a tribute to those early pioneers who came across the Great Dividing Range and settled in the district of thirty-one thousand acres, twenty miles south of Tamworth, New South Wales. Their stories cannot be told without first acknowledging the original owners of this land, exploration by the British and the squatters who opened up the inland for farming and grazing. Additionally, the establishment of the Australian Agricultural Company, with the purpose of improving merino sheep for fine wool production, bringing its own immigrant workforce to the Colony, is an important piece of Gowrie's history. Relayed by descendants of the original settlers or, 'Current Crop', their stories are often amusing, sometimes tragic, but always, the character of these generations of hard-working Australian farmers is evident. May they long be remembered as the 'Good Farmers of Gowrie'.