history

 Quite a lot perhaps.

A welcome trend in recent years has been to re-identify places and features in the landscape by the names that the First Nations people used at the time of colonisation. The Macquarie River is now regularly referred to as the Wambool. At first glance the Goonoo Forest would not appear to need this recognition, however it is unlikely that the original inhabitants of the forest used this name and that it is most likely an example of colonial mis-appropriation of aboriginal languages.

Goonoo does not seem to be a Wiradjuri word but a Kamilaroi word which gained popularity in the 19th C amongst white settlers in different parts of NSW due to its association with a prominent and successful early holding near Tamworth called Goonoo Goonoo meaning Running Water. It first appeared in the area of the forest in the late 19thC as the original name for the Mogriguy settlement and was taken from an early dam in the vicinity. Its name was changed to Mogriguy specifically because so much mail for the Tamworth locality was being directed there.

By the time of the First World War Goonoo was applied to a Shire in the area and when parts of the forest were declared a State Forest in 1916 it was given the Goonoo name and this was subsequently converted to a range of conservation areas in 2005.

From what I can find out about the Wiradjuri language in the area of the time, the forest should perhaps be more appropriately known as Mungamine, meaning Ironbark - mob - country.

The Fire Trails
For many years there were virtually no roads or trails through the forest apart from rough tracks used by aboriginal people and timber cutters. By the turn of the 19th C there was a trail roughly following the route of the current Mendooran Rd between Dubbo and Mendooran known as the “cut line”. This was extremely rudimentary and was mostly unsuitable for carts or drays. It wasn’t until the late 1930’s that a graded road was built between the two towns thro the forest.

In the late 20th Century the grid of the existing straight fire trails was laid down. Many of these trails bear the names of State Forest District Foresters from the western slopes, Samuels, Freeman, Withers, Burks and Kartzhoff were all Dubbo District Foresters. Frost was a forestry worker whose family lived in the forest for a short while after the Second World War. Garling, Starkey, Brennan and Frazer were District Foresters from Baradine and Forbes. Gates was a prominent landowner on Ranters Creek and Woodbury is the name of a property off Mogriguy Forest Rd and may also have been an early landowner. Mirrie Trail (also the name of a parish) appears to be taken from an aboriginal word but it may be from the Kamilaroi word for native cherry (Exocarpos cupressiformes), a type of sandalwood.

The Creeks
In that typically Australian imaginative fashion several of the creeks in the forest are named descriptively, Sandy, Rocky, Big, Gum , Spring.

Flowing north and northwest from the forest into the Castlreagh are two large drainage systems, the Denmire and Ranters creeks. Curiously there are no records of who Denmire and Ranter were, their names do not appear on the extensive lists of early settlers in the area nor do other historical records identify any other likely candidates. My theory is that they were perhaps early surveyors or boundary riders/shepherds in the area, these occupations generally travelled well ahead of homesteaders.

One of the tributaries of the Denmire is Quart Pot Creek, Quart Pot being an old name for a camping billy. The story behind another tributary, Dead Man’s, is probably lost in time.

Most of the creeks on the western side of the forest drain into the Coolbaggie (originally Coalbaggie) system, the most prominent in the forest being Goondy (originally Gundy). Gundy is probably a Wiradjuri word meaning “good camping place” and this is borne out by the numerous occupation sites found along the creek. It seems likely that Coolbaggie refers to “of the swamp”, cowal being the local Wiradjuri word for swamp.