Werris Creek

Postcode: 2341

Werris Creekis a small town in New South Wales, Australia, near Tamworth, in Liverpool Plains Shire. It is north of Quirindi and is at the junction of the railway lines to Armidale and Moree. It is 380m above sea level. The area is thought to have been once occupied by the Kamilaroi Aborigines. 'Werris' appears to derive from an Aboriginal word first written as 'Weia Weia', though no meaning is known. In earlier years Werris was written in a variety of ways, including Werres, Werries and Weery's.

It is still served by the daily Countrylink Xplorer service to and from Sydney which amalgamates/divides at the station, half the train to and from Armidale, the other half to and from Moree.

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. A post office opened in 1877 and a railway station was built there in 1879, designed by the NSW railway engineer John Whitton. It is 411 km from Sydney by rail. Werris Creek is overlooked by Mount Terrible, known to the locals as 'Terrible Billy'. It has two schools, St Joseph's Catholic school, established in 1915, and a government school. It has a swimming pool (opened in 1968), tennis courts, bowling green and golf club. The town has a rugby league team, the Magpies, which is part of the NSW Country Rugby League, Group 4 competition. In 1996 the Werris Creek Magpies won the Clayton Cup for being the best performed, premiership-winning first grade team, in country New South Wales.

Werris Creek has a large grain silo and a recently opened (2005) coal mine. The main employer in the town is Pacific National rail company. A high percentage of the working population are also employed in nearby Tamworth.

The Australian Railway Monument was recently opened near the station and part of the station building has been opened as a railway museum.

For more information about this town, click here