Werris Creek

Werris Creek is a small town in New South Wales, Australia, near Tamworth, in Liverpool Plains Shire. It is north of Quirindi and is at the junction of the Main North railway line to Armidale and Moree. At the 2011 census, Werris Creek had a population of 1,437.HistoryThe area is thought to have been once occupied by the Kamilaroi Aborigines.'Werris' appears to derive from an Aboriginal word first written as 'Weia Weia', though the exact meaning is not known. There is a similar aboriginal word pronounced "Werai" which means "look out" and this may be related because of the prominent hills in the area. In earlier years Werris was written in a variety of ways, including Werres, Werries and Weery's.The first European settlers came to the area in the 1830s and the Weia Weia Creek Station was established by the Reverend Francis Vidal around 1841. By the 1870s, there were 20 pastoral families occupying the valley and on the eastern side of the present townsite was Summer Hill station, belonging to John Single, after whom the main street is named.Werris Creek Post Office opened on 1 January 1878 and a railway station was built there in 1879, designed by the NSW railway engineer John Whitton. It is 411km from Sydney by rail and was termed 'the first railway town in Australia'.