Qualla: Tenterfield, New South Wales

Tenterfield, New South Wales: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mattinbgn (talk · contribs), CC BY 3.0. On the evening of 24 October 1889, in a modest hall called the School of Arts in a small New South Wales border town, an old politician named Henry Parkes stood up and argued that the six separate Australian colonies should become one nation. The speech he gave that night - the Tenterfield Oration - is remembered as the moment the idea of an Australian federation stopped being a debate among officials and became a call to the public. Twelve years later, in 1901, the Commonwealth of Australia came into being. People here will tell you, with some justification, that the nation was born in Tenterfield.

Image: Mattinbgn (talk · contribs) | CC BY 3.0

Tenterfield, New South Wales: The Oration That Made a Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Parkes had been turning the idea of federation over for years, but Tenterfield is where he made it a rallying cry. Speaking at the School of Arts, he argued that a united Australia could raise a single national army from the colonies' separate militias, and could finally settle t...

Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tenterfield, New South Wales: The Saddler on High Street

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tenterfield's other claim on the national memory is gentler, and set to music. George Woolnough, born in 1884, was the town saddler - the third man to own a saddlery on High Street, where he worked leather for more than half a century. His grandson, the entertainer Peter Allen, w...

Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tenterfield, New South Wales: Granite Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tenterfield sits high in the New England tableland, in country defined by granite. Great rounded boulders the size of houses lie scattered across the hills around town, on Kildare Road and beyond, the weathered bones of an ancient batholith pushing up through the soil. The climat...

Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tenterfield, New South Wales: A Town of Characters

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dewhurst, A., Public domain. For a town of around four thousand people, Tenterfield has produced a remarkable cast. Sir Harry Chauvel, born at nearby Tabulam, became the first Australian to command an army corps. Major J. F. Thomas, who once owned the local Tenterfield Star newspaper, won lasting fame for hi...

Image: Dewhurst, A. | Public domain