INVERELL’S Doreen Lockery received a phone call from her cousin, Gary Fairweather recently, telling her to have a look at an old photograph on The Inverell Times website. It opened the door to her family history that has deep roots in the founding of Delungra.

The photo shows teams of horses and drivers that have hauled grain to the Delungra Railway Depot. In the top right corner of the photo, buildings that faced the railway tracks are the Town Hall, Delungra Hotel, the butcher shops and pool rooms and the weighbridge. 

The railway opened in 1901 as ‘Reedy Creek’ and renamed Delungra in 1906 when the town was incorporated. It was Doreen’s great-grandfather, Colin McIntyre, who built the Delungra Hotel in town.

Visible in the left corner are the row of shops and former Bank of NSW. Both properties still exist on the Gwydir Highway today.

A Mr Walsh was the first person to conduct business in the Reedy Creek area, and he owned the first hotel on the property, Dunvegan, just west of town. Doreen grew up on Dunvegan. She said during the drought of 1965, her father and brother cleaned out the dam beside the land where the original hotel stood.

“And (they discovered) all these old bottles from the old hotel,” she smiled, “and Bob still has them.”

Colin established the hotel in town, and sold it later to AJ Buxton. Builder AAH May put a second storey on the hotel, expanding it to 22 bedrooms with extensive stables in 1924. The hotel burned down on January 11, 1956. The Delungra pub known today was opened on April 26, 1958.