A local family circa 1910 Courtesy of the
National Library Australia
Original local Aboriginal tribes included Dieri and
the Wonkongura who would share land first leased by William Rounsevell when he took up 400
square miles on 31 December 1875 (lease no. 2568).. The "run" was to be called
Cowarie (an Aboriginal word meaning 'Marsupial Rat'.
Mungerannie was originally part of the Cowarie and
Kanowa run. As the stock route north to Queensland improved, the number of drovers passing
through increased.
So much so, that Richard Forbes Sullivan and his
wife opened a store, eating house and hotel at Mungerannie in 1886 to supply shepherds,
drovers, travellers and surrounding station people with most of their daily needs. He even
put up a travellers' tent with several bunks for people to sleep in if they arrived during
the night.
The Sullivans ran the hotel until September 1889
when it was taken over by Robert Rowe.
In 1888, William Crombie, one of the regular
travellers and mailman along the track took up a block near the store. Now he had a place
to spell his horses and sell water for passing cattle from the just completed government
bore drilled in 1900.
From 1891 the hotel was run by Grace Carolin Mary
Samson providing also some female company for Susan Crombie.
The ever increasing traffic along the track made
the presence of a police camp necessary and a station was opened at Mungerannie in 1903.
Meanwhile the Crombie family was also increasing in numbers and the parents were quite
concerned about the lack of educational opportunities for their children. On 10 October
William Crombie wrote to the Minister of Education in Adelaide and stated that;
It only requires twelve children of a school
going age to get a government teacher in a district. I beg to state that I have six of my
own family of a school going age and that being only a working man I can ill afford to pay
the salary of a teacher and it is quite beyond me to board my children out. Can you assist
me in any way as my children must have some education.
The minister could not and did not even bother to
write back. So on 24 April 1906 Crombie wrote once more. This time he tried a different
approach and offered to pay $40 per year plus board and lodgings for a female teacher if
the department was willing to supply one. Although he supplied references from (Sir)
Sydney Kidman, John Kingsmill and A Helling nothing came of it until
1915 when a school was finally opened at Mungerannie.
The hotel was first traded from 1887 until 1894
when it was abandoned due to the droughts of that time. When the government bore was put
down in 1900 a small community slowly developed with a blacksmith shop, coaching stables,
police station, store, eating house and the bore-keepers housebeing constructed. The
little community survived in one way or another until the next major drought in 1920. The
hotel itself was not to be revived for nearly 100 years when it was again licensed in
1989. The store was restated by Mary Oldfield in 1974 and has been maintained since. |
