The Namoi Valley Who's Who
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Distinguished and Famous people from The Namoi Valley
📚 Dorothea Mackellar
Dorothea Mackellar repeatedly returned to Kurrumbede, the family property on the Namoi River northwest of Gunnedah. Her father bought it in 1905, and her brothers helped manage the station. The landscape and working life formed part of the rural experience behind her writing. Mackellar was born in Sydney; the family’s Gunnedah properties became important places of experience and return. Kurrumbede provides a documented family and literary association, with the homestead, outbuildings and surrounding country preserving a setting she knew well.
⛵ Ben Lexcen
Ben Lexcen, the yacht designer associated with Australia II, was born Robert Clyde Miller at Boggabri in 1936. A disrupted childhood and later railway apprenticeship preceded his work in boatbuilding, sailmaking and design. Australia II’s victory in the 1983 America’s Cup made his innovative thinking internationally familiar, particularly the much-discussed winged keel. Boggabri is the birthplace chapter in a career developed elsewhere, including Newcastle, Sydney and Queensland. A child born in an inland Namoi town eventually helped change the outcome of the world’s most famous yacht race.
