Byrock

Postcode: 2831

Byrock is a small village in north western New South Wales, Australia in Bourke Shire. It is named after a rock hole, called Bai by the Nyammba tribe. This became the Bye Rockhole, then Bye Rock, then Byrock.

It was founded to serve the Cobb and Co stage coachs. The railway opened in 1874, with an extension to Bourke. Later still, in 1888, a branch railway opened to Brewarrina. All these rail lines closed in the 1970s and 1980s.

No one really knows how Byrock got its name and the theories which abound are almost certainly more interesting than the real origins. One school of thought argues that one of the early local residents, a family which had a holding of 1600 acres, was named Bye. Thus when referring to the nearby rock hole people spoke of Bye's Rockhole. From there it was only a small step to Bye's Rock which subsequently became known as Bye Rock.

Another school of thought claims that the local Aborigines, the Nyamimba people, referred to the rock hole simply as 'bai'. This then became the Bye Rock hole

One thing is certain. When the railway arrived in the tiny settlement, the station was called 'Bye Rock'. The most popular explanation for how it became 'Byrock' is that, when the post office arrived, they requested a rubber stamp from Sydney and it came back with the incorrect spelling 'Byrock'. The Railway Station Master, eager for a simple solution, cut out the 'e' and the space from his sign and made it 'Byrock' as well.

The NSW government was determined to make Byrock a viable centre. In August, only a month before the arrival of the railway, the government offered blocks of land for sale in the town. Although this would seem like an imaginative initiative, the land around Byrock had already been occupied for some decades and the Cobb & Co coach had been coming through and stopping at the Mulga Creek Hotel (located about 3 km to the west of the town) for some years. With the arrival of the train, Cobb & Co started offering a service to Bourke four times weekly. The trip lasted a very bumpy 12 hours.

In fairness, the government did attract people to the town. By 1885 (only a year after the railway arrived) there were about 500 people living in the area. There were 10 stores, 5 hotels, as well as a butcher's shop and a baker's shop.

The railhead was designed to attract wool shipments from the north. This seemed to work. The first rail shipment from the town was a load of wool which had come from Paroo on the Queensland border.

In spite of this success the town was doomed because it did not have regular and reliable water. The rock hole, which is no more than about 400 metres west of the Mitchell Highway, on the road north of the Mulga Creek Hotel, provided beautiful water but it did dry up in times of drought. Water had to be brought from Narromine and it was sold to locals at one penny a gallon.

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