Breelong, New South Wales is a bounded rural locality of Gilgandra Shire and a civil parish of Gowen County, New South Wales.Robert McLean, The New atlas of Australia : the complete work containing over one hundred maps and full descriptive geography of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, together with numerous illustrations and copious indices (Sydney :J. Sands, [1886) Map 1.Map of Gowan County, New South Wales.
Geography The Parish is on the junction of the Wallumburrawang Creek and the Castlereagh River, and the nearest settlement of the parish is Gilgandra, New South Wales to the west.Robert McLean, The New atlas of Australia : the complete work containing over one hundred maps and full descriptive geography of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, together with numerous illustrations and copious indices (Sydney :J. Sands, [1886) Map 14. The main economic activity of the parish is agriculture
History The parish is on the traditional lands of Weilwan Aboriginal peoples.
On 20 July 1900, an indigenous man, Jimmy Governor, murdered four members of the Mawbey family, and the children's governess, at their farming property in the area of Breelong. The story of the murders received great publicity at the time.The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 July 1900, 'Tragedy Near Gilgandra' p.7-8The Sydney Morning Herald,4 August 1900, 'The Murders by Blacks' p.10 and became the basis in 1972 of a fictional work by Thomas Keneally, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/governor-jimmy-6439/text11017, published first in hardcopy 1983, accessed online 19 November 2017.
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