Wildflowers growing near Narembeen

Narembeen
Small wheatbelt town
Located 282 km east of Perth, Narembeen must be the only town in Australia to come into existence solely so a pub could be built. If the good citizens of Emu Hill (now no more than a siding 5 km south of Narembeen) had been happy to have a hotel, there would have been no need for Narembeen. In this, Narembeen seems to be a town which sums up a certain aspect of the Australian character.

The first European explorer into the Narembeen area was Surveyor General J. S. Roe who, on 11 October 1836, camped near a rocky outcrop which, because he had seen emus the day before, he named Emu Hill. He noted that there was a stream 'which contained an abundance of good running water'.

In the 1850s a small number of European settlers moved into the area. When the explorer Henry Maxwell Lefroy travelled through the area in 1863 he visited Charles Smith who had settled near Emu Hill, naming his 60 000 acre (about 24 300 ha) property Narembeen. It was later changed to Cumminin and then Kumminin.

The only other Europeans in the area at this time were the tenacious sandalwood cutters who passed through looking for the precious wood.

The whole area was sparsely populated until the beginning of the twentieth century when land was opened up and farmers moved in to graze sheep and grow wheat on their small 1000 acre (about 405 ha) holdings. The area around Emu Hill and Narembeen was surveyed in 1910.

As late as 1917 the township of Narembeen did not exist and even in 1920, after the arrival of the railway line, it was nothing more than a siding for Emu Hill.

Between 1920 and 1922 the importance of the two sidings reversed. In 1920 Emu Hill was the largest centre but the local community, when confronted with the possibility of building a hotel, opposed the plan and suggested a coffee palace or temperance hotel.

The idea of creating a town at the Narembeen siding was the brainchild of a prominent Perth lawyer, Henry Hale, and a Perth publican, Paddy Connolly. When the men realised the problems that were being created by the teetotal community at Emu Hill they purchased 30 acres (about 12 ha) of land at Narembeen, used their influence with the local politicians, got permission to build a pub and then sold off the rest of the land to prospective residents of their 'private town'.

The pub, which still stands today, was all that was needed to overwhelm the struggling nearby settlements and become the centre for the whole area. By 1925 Narembeen had a population of 2100.

Things to see:  

Museums and Local History
The history of the town is recalled in both the Old Church Museum on Longhurst Street and the Outdoor Museum on Brown Street but the most interesting part of the town's history is the old Cumminin homestead which is still standing. Located 11 km south-west of the town, it recalls a time when this far outpost of the Central Wheatbelt was little more than a few isolated graziers trying to eke a modest living out of an area of low rainfall and marginal lands.

There is an outstanding book on the town. Iris Bristow's Seedtime & Harvest: A History of the Narembeen District is a well-written and fascinating account of the history of the far eastern limits of the wheatbelt and the way they developed.

	Hotels
	Narembeen Hotel Churchill St Narembeen WA 6369 Telephone: (08) 9064 7272 Rating: *
	Caravan Parks
	Narembeen Caravan Park Currall St Narembeen WA 6369 Telephone: (08) 9064 7308