Canonba is a locality in the Orana region of New South Wales, Australia. There was also a village of the same name (sometimes spelt Canonbar or Cannonbar), which is now a ghost town. It lay on Duck Creek, a tributary of the Bogan River, approximately 30 km north-east of Nyngan. Since 1983, the old village site has been known officially as Old Canonba.
History
Aboriginal history
The area upon which Canonba lay is on the traditional lands of Wangaaypuwan dialect speakers (also known as Wangaibon) of Ngiyampaa people. After colonisation, although dispossessed, the local people remained on their lands; as late as 1889, a corroboree took place near Canonba. In the year 1907, there were 35 Aborigines recorded as living at 'Canonbar'.
The name Canonba may be derived from a local language word for the shingle-back lizard (Tiliqua rugosa). Early settlers recalled the word as Carringbung.
Settler colonisation, conflict and killings
The association of colonial settlers with the area dates from the time of the second expedition of the explorer and surveyor-general Sir Thomas Mitchell, in 1835. Duck Creek was surveyed by James Larmer, an assistant-surveyor and second-in-command of the expedition. Mitchell returned to the area, in January 1847, when his third expedition camped for two weeks at the 'ponds of Canonba', which would later become the site of the village.
The area between the Macquarie and the Bogan Rivers contains other watercourses, including Duck Creek, Gunningbar Creek, Crooked Creek and Marra Creek. Although the area was a semi-arid saltbush plain, the watercourses, waterholes, and billabongs improved the potential of the area for grazing, encouraging some settlers to move into the area, even though the same water sources were precious to the traditional owners. The area was outside the boundary of the Nineteen Counties—within which the colonial government of New South Wales allowed settlers to purchase land—but, from 1836, specific sections of land could be leased there for an annual payment, under the Squatting Act, 1836.
The area was the site of frontier violence in late 1841. Seeking water for their stock during a dry period, seven stockmen—working for William Lee and Joseph Moulder—drove 600 head of cattle off a legal grazing lease and into the area near the Canonba waterhole. It seems the cattle muddied and polluted the waterhole angering the traditional owners, who attacked the stockmen, killing three, and wounding three others. A stockman who was away from the main group, used his pistol to cover the wounded survivors as they escaped. Mounted Police from Bathurst, augmented by some stockmen, made a reprisal attack, at Duck Creek, that became a massacre. A contemporary report stated—although it was not known for certain how many died—there were fifteen or as many as thirty Aborigines killed. Only three of the Aborigines who died were identified as being involved in the stockmen's deaths. The party captured three other Aboriginal men, supposed to be involved in the stockmen's deaths, one of whom later escaped.
Even at the time, the actions of the Mounted Police were highly controversial. They had set out, during the absence of their commander, to assist the stockmen—who themselves had been acting illegally—carried out a frontier policing role normally that of the Border Police—under the command of local Commissioner for Crown Lands, Allman—and had killed many Aborigines who, although of the same tribe, were innocent of the killing of the stockmen. For his part in causing the original trouble with the Aborigines, Governor Gipps revoked Lee's lease. The other effect of the violence was that further settlement in the area between the Bogan and the Darling was banned, in effect, until around 1860. Sadly, this was far from the only incident of horrific frontier violence and killing near the Bogan River during the 1840s.