Mudgee

In Mudgee the Mowgee clan extended over a 50 km radius centred around the Cudgegong River. Their women's totem was the wedge tail eagle (Mullian) and the men's totem the crow (Waggan).[3]

There are Aboriginal sites, including some with evidence of tool making, and cave paintings. Some of the better known and accessible ones include Hands on the Rocks, The Drip and Babyfoot Cave.

Some places are named after the local Wiradjuri tribal areas, including Mudgee itself, whose name is derived from the Wiradjuri term Moothi meaning "Nest in the Hills"[4] or "mou-gee" meaning "contented".[5] Others include Lue (Loowee, 'a chain of waterholes'); Gulgong ('a gully'); Wollar ('a rock water hole'); Menah ('flat country'); Eurunderee ('a local tree'); Guntawang ('a peaceful place'), Cooyal ('dry country'); Wilbertree ('a long switch'); Gooree ('native chasing live animal'); Burrendong ('darker than usual'). The Aboriginal name of the Rylstone area was Combamolang.

Mudgee post office

James Blackman was the first European settler to cross the Cudgegong River in 1821[6] followed quickly by Lieutenant William Lawson who was then commandant of Bathurst. Lawson would later take up 6,000 acres (2,400 ha) in the area.

George and Henry Cox, sons of William Cox, were the first settlers on the Cudgegong River when they established the Menah run, 3 kilometres north of the current town. The European settlers were soon in conflict with the Wiradjuri over a range of issues including the killing of livestock and animals such as kangaroos and possums which were food sources for the Wiradjuri. Martial law was declared by Governor Thomas Brisbane in 1824, leading to the killing of a large number of the Wiradjuri people.[7]

This was mostly organised by the local churches after service, as the Wiradjuri would not give up their totemic religion. As late as the 1930's human skeletal remains were still in trees after a group of Wiradjuri were driven off a cliff on Mt. Misery. This led to another group retaliating by eating a european settler on nearby Cannibal Hill. Misery Mountain is visible from Mudgee town centre as it has the communications towers on the skyline to the South West. It is easily accessible by foot from a track leading from the Southern end of Henry Bailey Drive. Walking from there to Cannibal Hill the significance of the site becomes immediately apparent: there is a single veichle lane width path, perfectly even in width and level, made of volcanic soil, where there is no volcanic plug, from there almost to Avisford, 30 kilometers away. It is faster and easier to walk the distance than along the modern road, due to the cooler temperature at the higher altitude (and the prevailing cool breeze in summer) and the more direct route.

From both Mt. Misery and the nearby hill with the remaining communications towers, from 8am to 9am depending on the time of year, the morning light and shadow clearly outline a pyramid, North, South, East, West, 7 across to 1 high, on the plain just north of Mudgee. No archaeological work has been done at either site.

While the site of Mudgee was surveyed for a village in 1823, the original settlement was Menah, having a police station and lock-up by 1833. It has been incorrectly claimed that Robert Hoddle designed the village which was gazetted in 1838. Although Hoddle was the first surveyor in the region, marking out the boundaries of Putta Bucca and Bombira, by the time the village was gazetted, he had already left the district to become leader of the Port Phillip Survey.[8] John Blackman built a slab hut, the first dwelling in Mudgee and its general store.[9]

By 1841 there were 36 dwellings, three hotels, a hospital, a post office, two stores and an Anglican church. St John's Church of England was consecrated on 6 May 1841.[10] The police station moved from Menah in the mid-1840s and an Anglican school was established in that decade.

Mudgee Railway Station (1884)

Lovejoy House

View of Market Street, looking towards the centre of the town

In 1851 the population of Mudgee was 200. This skyrocketed with the discovery of gold by Edward Hargraves in nearby Hargraves, leading to a gold rush. While no gold was found in Mudgee itself, the town is central to the goldfields of Gulgong, Hill End and Windeyer, and grew rapidly as a result.

Mudgee was declared as a municipality in 1860 making it the second oldest municipality west of the Great Dividing Range with a population of 1500 in 1861. A public school was built in the 1850s together with the present Anglican, Catholic Methodist and Presbyterian churches. A new police station, courthouse, Mechanics' Institute and a town hall were built in the 1860s. There were four coach factories operating in Mudgee to cater for the demand of the nearby goldfields. The National Trust of Australia has a number of these buildings registered including the Mudgee Museum (formerly the Colonial Inn),[11] the Catholic presbytery, the court house, the police station and the Anglican Church. On 1 June 1861 the Electric Telegraph system arrived and was opened for messages to be transmitted and received at the Telegraph office.[12]

One gold miner attracted to the Mudgee district was Niels Peter Larsen, who married Louisa Albury in Mudgee in 1866. They were the parents of leading Australian poet Henry Lawson in Grenfell in 1867 and changed their names to Peter and Louisa Lawson. By the birth of their third child, they moved to a selection at Pipeclay (now Eurunderee) 8 km north of Mudgee. The site is now a rest stop with a plaque.

Louisa Lawson's vigorous lobbying led to the establishment of the slab-and-bark Eurunderee Public School in 1876 with Henry Lawson first attending aged nine. He would later write about the school in his poem, The Old Bark School. Lawson later attended St. Matthews Central School, Mudgee before progressively worsening deafness led to him leaving school at 14. He lived in the region until age 15 and many of his stories were written about the district.

As the gold petered out in the latter half of the 19th century, Mudgee was sustained by both its wool industry and a nascent wine industry founded by a German immigrant, Adam Roth, in the 1850s. The opening of the railway extension from Rylstone to Mudgee occurred on 10 September 1884.[13][14]

The railway boosted the town's agriculture. The extension between Rylstone and Mudgee closed on 2 March 1992.[14] This same section re-opened eight years later, on 2 September 2000[14] and closed again in 2007. The Wallaby Track Drive Tour visits various sites associated with Lawson including the old Eurundee Public School, the Henry Lawson memorial, the Budgee Budgee Inn, Sapling Gully, Golden Gully and the Albury Pub which was owned by Lawson's grandfather.

In 1890 a local newspaper was founded with the title the Mudgee Guardian and North-Western Representative.[15] Its title changed in 1963 to the Mudgee Guardian and Gulgong Advertiser and is currently published twice a week.

Mudgee's Glen Willow Regional Sports Stadium hosted the 2012 City vs Country Origin rugby league match with an attendance of 8,621, and the 2017 match with an attendance of 8,322.[16] The St. George Dragons regularly host home matches there.[17]

Additionally, in the A-League, the Western Sydney based Western Sydney Wanderers have chosen to take their Community Round match to Mudgee's Glen Willow Regional Sports Stadium, as part of their new Regional Strategy,[18]

In 2014, the local council found itself involved in a statewide corruption investigation when officers of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (New South Wales) raided the local council's offices.[19][20]