The Peel Estate (Goonoo Goonoo) and the Development of West Tamworth
Once the Company’s new estates at the Peel and Warrah were confirmed, its flocks were sent north from Port Stephens, with the latter proving entirely unsuitable for sheep grazing. In 1834, approximately 7,000 sheep from Warrah were moved up to the Peel Estate and throughout the 1830s and 1840s a series of sheep stations were established on the Peel Estate in northern New South Wales including Calala, Goonoo Goonoo, and Forest Creek.
Calala was the first of these sheep stations, established in 1834. The name Calala was chosen as it is the traditional Aboriginal name for the Peel. Calala, on the outskirts of modern-day Tamworth, served as the head station for both the Peel and Liverpool Plains Estates, with a bark hut constructed for the Company’s Local Superintendent. Eventually the increasing numbers of travellers heading north to the Darling Downs strained the hospitality of the General Superintendent on the river crossing at Calala, so the head station was moved 15 miles south to Goonoo Goonoo in 1841.
During the early 1840s the number of sheep on the Estate grew dramatically. In 1840 there were 26,000 sheep on the Peel, and this had increased to 43,000 by 1844. Until adequate shearing facilities were constructed in 1841, most of the sheep at Goonoo Goonoo needed to be transported down to Port Stephens for shearing. Once shearing facilities were established, at its peak the Company was shearing 200,000 sheep at Goonoo Goonoo annually.
In the 1850s the Company purchased a further 44,114 sheep, 171 horses, and 270 Shorthorn cattle for Goonoo Goonoo at a cost of approximately £26,000.
Some of the earliest buildings at Goonoo Goonoo were built by the Company’s convicts including Goonoo Goonoo Homestead (1841), Goonoo Goonoo Store and Post Office (1853), and Goonoo Goonoo Church (1890).
The Company Town of West Tamworth developed on the Peel Estate where the Great North Road crossed the Peel River. Once the Company obtained its land title, an auction was held to sell 12 blocks of land in the new area of West Tamworth in 1849. A jail, courthouse, and denominational school were established, and provision was made for a church, another school and cemetery. In 1853 and 1854 there were further auctions of town blocks, although these had mixed results owing to the elevated price of some of the blocks when compared with sales in the “Government Town” of Tamworth, across the river.
Growing agitation to incorporate Tamworth brought unease, with public establishments such as the court house moved across the river and attempts were made to take the cemetery and racecourse and close the church in order to build a larger one. The Municipality of Tamworth was incorporated in 1874 and included both the government and private towns of Tamworth and West Tamworth. The Peel River Land and Mineral Company General Superintendent Phillip Gidley King was elected Tamworth’s first mayor. In 1878 a railway station opened in Tamworth on land resumed from the Peel Company, with more land resumed for a government school (1883), King’s Hill Park (1898) and Tamworth Airport (1933) and land sold to the Tamworth Jockey Club (1935).
In 1852 enormous change came to the Peel Estate with the discovery of gold at Golden Point near the Peel River by Thomas Laurie and Thomas Renwick, sons of tenant farmers at Port Stephens who had just returned from the Californian Gold Rush. With the ensuing gold rush at Hanging Rock and later Rocky River, an increasing number of people were using the track from Wallabadah to Tamworth via Goonoo Goonoo rather than the main road. That year the Company laid out townships at Goonoo Goonoo and Nundle, although very few lots were sold at Nundle and no lots were sold at Goonoo Goonoo. Commissioner King realised the first buildings in Goonoo Goonoo would be a public house (hotel) and rival store, neither of which he wanted located near the Company’s Head Station.
In the 1880s-90s Philip Gidley King handed the management of Goonoo Goonoo and the Peel Estate over to his son and built himself a new house in Tamworth. He called his home 'Calala' and today it is the site of the Tamworth & District Historical Society’s Museum.
From the 1950s, Goonoo Goonoo became the centre of the Company’s Santa Gertrudis breeding operation, with the first Santa Gertrudis breeders purchased for the Goonoo Goonoo Stud from Texas in 1955.
As the New South Wales Government continued to resume land around the Peel Estate, and the Company also laid out and sold off lots, the Company’s focus continued to shift north. With the Australian Agricultural Company’s acquisition of the Peel River Land and Mineral Company in 1959 and the purchase of properties across Queensland and the Northern Territory, the Company focus moved to building its cattle operations farther north and the head office moved from Tamworth to Brisbane.
