Local heroes

In the middle of the night on 24 June 1852 a catastrophic flood swept through the old town of Gundagai, built on the low-lying Murrumbidgee River flats, leaving just three buildings standing and claiming the lives of between 80 and 100 people; it was the deadliest flood in Australia’s recorded history.

In the Wiradjuri language the name ‘Murrumbidgee’ means ‘big water’ or ‘plenty water’ and the area now known as Gundagai had long been used as a camping and meeting place and hunting ground by the Wiradjuri people; their warnings to early settlers that the land was subject to inundation went unheeded. But the death toll that night would have been much higher if not for the heroic effor ts of local Wiradjuri men, who navigated the flood waters in a bark canoe and rowboat rescuing, over three days, some 69 survivors from trees (a third of the town’s population at the time). Gundagai was later rebuilt on higher ground above the floodplain, and today a bronze sculpture of two of the four rescuers known by name – Yarri and Jacky Jacky, complete with a canoe – can be seen on Sheridan Street in tribute to their heroism.