Yornaning, Western Australia

Yornaning is a small town located in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, on Great Southern Highway, between Pingelly and Narrogin.The surrounding areas produce wheat and other cereal crops. The town is a receival site for Cooperative Bulk Handling.HistoryThe name is believed to mean "land of many waters" in the local Noongar Aboriginal language and was first recorded as a place name in a survey of the area in 1869; it was previously spelt "Yornanmunging" or "Yernanunging". In the late 1890s, a siding on the Great Southern Railway called simply "Water Tank" was established here, and the name Yornaning was finally arrived at in 1905 after several renamings. A townsite was gazetted adjacent to the siding in 1907, and maintenance workers for the railway were encouraged to move there. The siding was important as a major water-taking stop for the steam engines passing through - an average of 30 passenger and freight trains passed through per week.The Yornaning Hall, a wooden building, was opened in 1912 by the Minister of Agriculture. A dam had been constructed sometime prior to 1912 and had filled with a reasonable amount of water, so much so that the Fish Acclimatisation Society were considering stocking it with fish. In 1923 a young man named William Johnstone drowned in the dam.