Alderman and health inspector George Bussell.
Maitland Street: Long time resident George Bussell recorded his early memories of Gunnedah when he first arrived in 1877, after travelling by Nowland’s Coaches from the rail terminus in Murrurundi. The reminiscences were published in the Gunnedah Municipal Jubilee booklet ‘Back to Gunnedah Week’ in 1935. He described the businesses in Maitland Street as the coach entered from the east – with Batley and Eather, a butcher’s shop, on the left, Mark Turner’s Caledonian Hotel on the corner of Poe Street (now Abbott Street), John Turner (baker), Noakes and Jarmain (saddlers), Arthur Jarmain (blacksmith and wheelright), C.
Beauvais (cordial manufacturer), with the old lock-up and courthouse on the corner. On the opposite corner across Elgin Street was Burke’s Red White and Blue Hotel, Mr Bussell recalled, followed by Thomson the bootmaker, the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, in a brick cottage, Merton the baker, Bridge a storekeeper and J. Lloyd, a saddler, on the corner. Across Marquis Street on the opposite corner was Brown’s butcher shop, next to a cottage and then a blacksmith’s shop kept by the Munros’ the corner of Chandos Street stood the Ben Bolt Hotel, kept by W. Self.
Coming back, along the opposite side of Maitland Street was a store kept by A. Hunt (bootmaker), then George Cohen’s general store, which at the time was the largest in the northwest, Mr Bussell noted.
Crossing Marquis Street, the next building was Everingham’s Golden Fleece Hotel and further along was the business of A. Hartman (saddler), J. Pullen (baker) and Goddard the chemist on the corner of Elgin Street.
Five years later, in 1882, Mr Bussell recorded that because of flooding, most of the businesses had been transferred to Conadilly Street, Barber Street and Rosemary streets and the hotels had increased in number from six to 11.
Gunnedah’s early pioneering European heritage is forever recorded in the names of streets, parks and bridges.
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