Gunning & District Historical Society

Memorial plaques for the Browns and the Wilsons, Dalton Methodist Church The year 1861 proved to be a sorrowful one for many of the residents of Wesley Vale and the Jerrawa Creek area. Along with scarletina (scarlet fever), the rapid spread of diphtheria among the children of the district took a heavy toll on families. Among the local families to suffer the loss of children were Thomas and Sarah Brown of Wesley Vale. Fatally affected also were the children of John and Elizabeth Wilson at Jerrawa Creek. The Dalton Methodist Church has two significant memorial plaques, the one mentioning the Brown family and the other tells the story of the Wilsons. Both families lost children to the diphtheria outbreak in the district- all in the year 1861. John and Elizabeth Wilson Tom Brown, so well-known for his varied and vigorous evangelism from the time he arrived in Wesley Vale in 1847, and his wife Sarah, lost three children in 1861. David aged 14 years, Mary aged 9 and Ebe...

Ambrose Alchin (1800-1877) and John Alchin (1821-1901). Land on Oolong Creek was first made available for sale by auction in 1851, although several farmers had already taken up selections there prior to that year – men such as Simeon Lord (land grant) and Thomas Brown (land purchase). Announcement of Land Auctions, Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser, 25 October 1851, p. 4. The location of land in these years was always described according to creeks, for example, near “Blackeney [Blakney] Creek”, “commencing at Pudman Creek”, “at Jerrawa Creek, near the head of Oolong Creek” or “at Oolong Creek or Chain of Ponds”. It was valuable to know where these and other water courses started and finished. Ambrose Alchin (1800-1877) and his sons John Alchin (1821-1901), William James Alchin (1827-1918) and Charles Alchin (1837-1908) were active in land transactions from the 1850s and into the 1860s at Oolong Creek. Dalton and Oolong Creek were the “seats” of the...

Historical photo of the Exeter Railway Disaster, Friday 13th March 1914. See  ABC Illawarra . In heavy fog, just before midnight on the evening of Friday, 13th March 1914, the Temora-bound mail train from Sydney collided with the Sydney-bound goods train from Junee at Exeter, NSW. The Junee goods train had been shunted onto the main line and it was presumed that the fog had obscured the signals for the driver of the Temora mail train. Fourteen people were killed and many more were injured in what was to become known as the Exeter Railway Disaster. At the time, this was the worst rail disaster in Australian history. A report on the incident appeared in  The Advertiser  on 16th March 1914 and is available on Trove . Pollard Family Grave Sites at Dalton Cemetery. Photo: Beth Aglio Recently, local author and historian, Keith Brown, accompanied Beth Aglio, a descendent of the Pollard family from Dalton, to assist her with some family history research. At the fam...