Qualla: Uralla

Uralla: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Thunderbolt's Way carries his name. So does a pub, a motel, a scatter of roads, and a granite outcrop from which he is said to have ambushed travellers on the highway below. More than 150 years after Frederick Ward was shot dead just outside town, Uralla has decided not to forget its bushranger, and it has built an entire civic personality around him. Yet this small town on the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales is more than one outlaw's afterlife. It sits above 1,000 metres, where summers are mild and winters bite, on land the Anaiwan people have known for far longer than any road.

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Image: Kgbo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uralla: Anaiwan Ground

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JulieMay54, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name came before the town did. "Uralla" was taken from the language of the Anaiwan, also written Anēwan, the Aboriginal people whose country spreads across the New England tableland from Guyra and the north down through Armidale to Uralla and Walcha. The word is understood to...

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Image: JulieMay54 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uralla: Gold in the Rocky River

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. A creek full of gold made the town. Squatters had pushed onto the rich grazing runs of the New England tableland through the 1830s and 40s, among them the Irishman Samuel McCrossin, who first camped on the creek with his wife and seven children in 1839 and settled for good by 184...

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Image: Kgbo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uralla: The Gentleman Bushranger

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Newm30, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fred Ward was the longest-roaming bushranger in Australian history, and his end came at Uralla. On 25 May 1870, after robbing travellers near the big rock on the highway, Ward was shot and killed at Kentucky Creek by Constable Alexander Binney Walker, who first brought down the o...

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Image: Newm30 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uralla: Wool, Vines and a Satellite Dish

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today the cold that defeated the wheat farmers is the town's quiet advantage. The high, frosty tableland raises Merino sheep prized for super-fine and ultra-fine wool destined for the world's fashion houses, and the same chill suits cool-climate vineyards and apple orchards. Thre...

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Image: Cgoodwin | CC BY-SA 4.0