Finding and naming Eumungerie

To be precise, Eumungerie is 498.235 rail kilometres from Sydney.  This equates to 309 miles from the buffer stops at platform 1, Sydney Steam Terminal station.

The air of Eumungerie is hardly rarified - it is a bare 299.9 metres above sea level.  

Eumungerie is reached at the conclusion of a 36 kilometre rail journey from Dubbo. 

It is approached from the south on a 0.55 per cent (1 in 183) falling grade.  The railway yard is generally level, and trains departing Eumungerie for Gilgandra experience a 0.3 per cent (1 in 330) rising grade.

The railway’s identity at this location shifted through several guises during the early years.  During the construction phase the location was known as Coalbaggie Siding, principally so as to distinguish it from the settlement at Coalbaggie Creek which was approximately ten kilometres away.  This distance somewhat questions the rationale for the use of Coalbaggie Siding. 

At the station’s opening on 18 February 1903 the location was designated as Coalbaggie Creek.  Three months later in May 1903 the station was designated as Eumungerie, although it was also described clearly on a 1905 parish map as Eumungerie Siding.  Shortly thereafter, probably in 1905, the station was described by its final and current name, simply Eumungerie.

The name Eumungerie was not adopted uniformly by Federal and State agencies at the time it was adopted by the Railway Commissioners.  It appears that the post office was known as Eumungerie for at least 18 months before the station carried this name.  Similarly, the school’s transition to ‘Eumungerie Public School’ occurred in late 1904.  Earlier it too had carried the Coalbaggie nomenclature as ‘Coalbaggie Provisional School’.

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