Morawa Scene—Article 11: South Merkanooka to Morawa
It is pretty much a year since I did the last Morawa Scene page which was Article 10. But I have finally got around to drafting up Article 11.
This article talks about the various names used to identify the township/locality now known as Morawa but was originally generally referred to as South Merkanooka.
As usual, click on the image of the article as published in the Morawa Scene (shown at right) to view a larger version of it.
The previous article can be found here.
As usual the complete content of the article are reproduced below.
MORAWA, previously Morawa Central, previously South Merkanooka, previously Morowa, and before that possible Mowara.
About this time last year I cobbled together ten one page articles about the early times of Morawa usually featuring something about the first store in Morawa, being P. H. Lodge & Sons. I ‘published’ them in the Morawa Scene thinking, at the time, that probably about 100 people or so got to see the Scene. But it seems maybe only 20 or so people get the Scene.
Anyway, for this page—the 11th in my series—I am going to cover what I think is the evolution of the name for the town that is now Morawa.
Back before about 1910 the localities of Morawa (or Mowara as I sometime see it written back then) and Merkanooka were blurred. Back then referring to Merkanooka one might be referring to where Mowara/Morowa was located and vice versa. Note the included clip (above) from the Geraldton Guardian 31/8/1910 which starts, “The Mowara sub-division of 50,000 acres close to Merkanooka, and 15 miles east of Yandanooka …”.
References to a locality named South Morowa start to become common in the papers after about 1912. The first reference I can find to South Morowa, shown above, is in the Daily News of 21/2/1912 where tenders are being called for the construction of the school house. Notice that this clip (above) also mentions the Morowa Central School.
Between 1910 and 1919 there are 159 references to South Morowa in the Trove newspaper search. As shown in the clip at left, the number of references to South Morowa fall off sharply after 1919 down to seven between 1920 and 1929 and then just five between 1930 and 1059.
After about 1912 we find that South Merkanooka comes into more common use when referring to Morawa.
I am not sure why this is as Morawa is not south of Merkanooka. Morawa is to the east of Merkanooka, which is actually located at the intersection of Ryan, Dreghorn, and Coaker Roads ENE of Morawa. Why wasn’t the location of what is soon to be known as Morawa Central referred to as East Merkanooka? That would have made more sense. Who knows.
Referring to Morawa as South Merkanooka seems to have been common between about 1910 and 1925. However, from about 1915 to 1930-ish the naming of Morawa Central was also occasionally used. Hence, the use of the names of South Merkanooka and Central Morawa overlap up until around 1930.
With all these locality names it seems that even the Post Office was having issues. Note the clip below from the Moora Herald and Midland Districts Advocate, March 1917.
As can be gleaned from this clip there is “Much confusion and annoyance caused by the absurd nomenclature …” involving Morowa. There is South Morowa/Morowa, Morowa Central, and Morowa North (which was something I had not come across before in my research).
As a small matter of interest, it ended up costing £194 to construct the school at South Morowa and £180 for the one at Central Morowa (which is now Morawa). It would appear, from this, that the school at South Morowa was bigger than the one at Morowa/Morawa.
The following, from the Geraldton Express newspaper in July of 1915 shows stops on the Wongan Hills railway line.
The order shown here is somewhat odd as South Morowa is between Koolanooka and Morowa. Also, as far as I can determine, South Morowa was not actually near the railway line. Nor was Merkanooka (Murkanooka).
So, in a nutshell, the existing town of Morawa has had the names in the past of, in chronological order, Mowara, Morowa, South Merkanooka, Morawa Central/Central Morawa, and then finally sometime around the 1930s, Morawa.
Just so there is something on this page about P. H. Lodge here is an arc lantern slide advert from around 1925. These were shown before the movie started using an arc-lantern slide projector.
Notice how Morawa is spelt on this slide.
