The Merredin railway museum

Merredin (including Burracoppin)
'The Garden Town in the Heart of the Wheat-belt'.
Located on the Great Eastern Highway 259 km east of Perth and 314 m above sea level, Merredin is the most substantial settlement of the Central Wheat Belt. It is strategically located and, as the town promotion says, it likes to think of itself as 'The Garden Town in the Heart of the Wheat-belt'.

Merredin's history varies from that of other wheat-belt towns in the sense that it started as a stopping place on the way to the goldfields. The first European explorer into the area was the Surveyor General J. S. Roe, who travelled through the region in 1836 but was not impressed by its dryness and the low rainfall.

By the 1850s sandalwood cutters were in the area but there was little agriculture. It wasn't until Assistant Surveyor Charles Hunt explored the area in the period 1864-66 that it began to open up. Hunt saw the pastoral potential but realised the importance of water. He called the area Hampton Plains after John Stephen Hampton, Governor of Western Australia from 1862 to 1868.

Hunt made five journeys through the area. Of the five journeys the first was exploratory (1864), the second established a track which moved from waterhole to waterhole (1865) and the third built a series of wells and dams. The result was a road which later became known as the York to Goldfields road and, until the arrival of the railway, was the only link between the coast and the gold towns of Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie.

It is almost certain that Hunt climbed Merredin Peak (a short distance out of town to the north) and that he heard the town's name from the local Aborigines. There is, as always, some confusion over the origin of the name. Hunt claimed that the local Aborigines referred to the place as 'Merrriding' while other explanations suggest that the name comes from 'merrit-in' - 'the place of the Merrit' (merrit being a kind of tree which was used for making spears) - or that it was the name used by the Aborigines to describe the 'huge bare granite rock' which the locals now call Merredin Peak.

In the late 1860s a number of large pastoral leases were taken up in the area but no township evolved. As late as 1889, when Assistant Surveyor Henry King set up camp on the north side of Merredin Rock (see the Merredin Peak Heritage Trail for a map to the exact site), there was still no township. The first settlement was established to the north of Merredin Peak on the York to the Goldfields road but it was hastily moved when the railway, which couldn't follow the gradients of Hunts Road, was built a few kilometres to the south.

The town really came into existence as a result of the goldrushes. In 1888 the area to the east of Merredin was officially proclaimed a goldfield and over the next decade prospectors and fossickers poured through the area. Gold was discovered at Coolgardie in 1892 and at Kalgoorlie a year later. At first the prospectors used Hunt's waterholes road and this meant that they passed through the site of the modern town. In 1893 the railway reached the town. Merredin's importance as a town was directly related to the establishment of a superb water catchment scheme on Merredin Peak.

The channel going into the dam at Merredin. It was the town's sole source of water in the early days

A rock wall was built around the contours of Merredin Peak. It led to a 100 m channel which in turn led into a dam which had a storage capacity of 25 million litres. The scheme held every drop of water which landed on the Peak and directed it all into the dam which provided water for both the town and the railway. The entire structure is still intact and can be easily reached at the northern end of town (the Merredin Peak Heritage Trail has a map). It is a fascinating wheat-belt attempt to solve the area's shortage of water. Constructed between 1893 and 1896, it ensured that Merredin would become much more than just another wheat-belt siding.

The need for the water from Merredin Peak disappeared in 1903 when C. Y. O'Connor's remarkable 565 km pipeline was completed. This joined the waterless goldfields at Kalgoorlie with the plentiful supplies of water in the Helena River east of Perth. Interestingly the Merredin Peak dam continued to supply water to the railway until 1968 and even today it is still used as the water supply for the fountain outside the Railway Museum.

Land in the present townsite was offered for sale in 1906 and by 1911 the Merredin Roads Board had been formed. In 1904 the Agricultural Research Station was established. It was here that the famous Bencubbin strain of wheat was developed.

Things to see:  

Merredin Railway Water Tower
The railway water tower, which still advertises the now defunct Kalgoorlie Bitter (one can only imagine what a beer made in a goldmining town must have been like), was built in 1893 and still stands as a sentinel for people arriving at Merredin.

Merredin Railway Museum
It stands beside the Merredin Railway Museum which must be one of the finest railway museums in Australia. The railway line arrived in Merredin in 1893 and the station was built in 1895. It consisted of one shed on a ramp. The foundations of the original shed are still under the railway ramp today. By 1904 Merredin was the locomotive depot for the line and there were a number of small branch lines reaching out into the wheat-belt to service the surrounding farmers. In 1968, when a new station was built, the Merredin Historical Society took over the old station. It now is a near-perfect re-creation of the old station with just about every piece of railway memorabilia possible. It has a working windmill, a beautifully preserved 1897 G117 steam engine, and the station still has the old scales and cream cans.

Historic Buildings
The township of Merredin has a number of interesting and unusual buildings. The Post Office (1913), on the corner of Bates and Barrack Streets, is a handsome building at the entrance to the main part of the town and the Town Hall (1925) in Mitchell Street has a clock tower (made by the same company who built 'Big Ben' in London) which is a memorial for the local soldiers who died during World War I. But the most interesting building by far is the Cummins Theatre in Bates Street which was built in 1928 from remnants of some demolished Coolgardie pubs and the old Coolgardie Tivoli Theatre. Local legend has it that the bricks still have small deposits of gold in them.

C.B.H. Grain Transfer Terminal
The huge C. B. H. Grain Transfer Terminal at Merredin is more impressive and interesting than most bulk handling facilities. Built in 1966, it originally handled wheat coming in on narrow gauge railway tracks and being transferred to the larger gauge railway line to the coast. It has a capacity of 220 000 tonnes and is the largest horizontal wheat storage facility in the Southern Hemisphere. The Merredin Tourist Centre can arrange tours for people who are interested.

Burracoppin
To the west of Merredin is the tiny settlement of Burracoppin where, in the 1920s, the novelist Arthur Upfield (famous for his 'Boney' detective stories) worked clearing scrub. He saw it as 'a replica of five hundred Australian wheat towns'. A very apt description.

	Tourist Information
	Merredin District Visitors Centre Barrack St Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1666 Facsimile: (08) 9041 2788
	Motels
	Merredin Motel & Gumtree Restaurant 10 Gamenya Ave Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1886 Rating: **
	Merredin Olympic Motel Great Eastern Hwy Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1588 Rating: **
	Hotels
	Commercial Hotel Barrack St Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1052 Rating: *
	Merredin Oasis Hotel 8 Great Eastern Hwy Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1133 Rating: **
	Caravan Parks
	Merredin Caravan Park & Av A Rest Village Great Eastern Hwy Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1535 Rating: ***
	Restaurants
	Commercial Hotel Barrack St Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1052
	Merredin Motel & Gumtree Restaurant Gamenya Ave Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1886
	Merredin Oasis Hotel 8 Great Eastern Hwy Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1133
	Merredin Olympic Motel Great Eastern Hwy Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 1588
	Merredin Palace Chinese Restaurant Bates St Merredin WA 6415 Telephone: (08) 9041 2855