Nungarin North was a small settlement about 2Km north of the current town of Nungarin¹.

On 21 Aug 1912, a correspondent from the Merredin Mercury and Central Districts Index reported that that Mr A C McCorry had 700 acres of land to the north of the railway siding at Nungarin. The report continued with the news that Mr McCorry was “erecting a store, a blacksmith’s shop and a stone hotel containing 20 rooms at a cost of £4,000 “². That roughly equates to $550,000 in today’s money!

This investment seems to have been aimed at encouraging people to move into the area north of the siding as he was also creating several half acre blocks near to the hotel site. The Commissioner of Railways had visited the site and promised to upgrade the Nungarin Siding with the addition of a good shed, lavatories, an extended ramp and the appointment of a man in charge.

Mr McCorry was also a driving force behind the building of an agricultural hall in the area, hosting a fund-raising dance at his home on the 31^st March, 1912.

So what happened to Mr McCorry’s entrepreneurial enterprise? Hopefully our ongoing research will tell us and we will let you know.

Source

1. Joukovsky-Vaisvila, Olga, 1978. Around the Rock: A History of the Shire of Nungarin, Western Australia. ↩︎
2. Merredin Mercury and Central Districts Index, Wed 21 Aug 1912, p.3. Nungarin. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article155995515. Accessed 17 Sep 2023 ↩︎