Mungindi - Culture and History

The town's name derives from the language of the Kamilaroi people who inhabited the area before white settlement. It is thought to mean 'water hole by the river'.

Escaped convict George Clarke (see entry on Boggabri) traversed the district with the Kamilaroi people in the years 1826-1831. Upon his recapture he told of a vast inland river called the Kindur which prompted the acting governor to send Sir Thomas Mitchell to investigate the claims. Mitchell encountered the Barwon River in 1832, a little south of present-day Mungindi. It was Mitchell's favourable report on the pastoral prospects of the area which prompted squatters to fan out in the 1830s (1) heading north from the Hunter Valley along the Namoi then west along the Gwydir River to the Barwon and (2) north from Bathurst and Mudgee along the Macquarie and Castlereagh Rivers, with the first settlement on the Barwon occurring between 1839 and 1842.

The town was laid out in 1880 by surveyor Robert Matthews who did some interesting early ethnographic research relating to the indigenous people of Australia.

There is an annual show held at the end of May and a race meeting on the first Saturday in July. The Two Mile Pub is an old inn of local fame which is indeed two miles out of town, on the Queensland side of the border.