page_title: Wyangala
section_title: Post office, school and church
hierarchical_section_title: Wyangala / History / 20th century / Post office, school and church
caption_attribution_description: English: The Wyangala Dam post office opened on 14 March 1929 and the first postmark was of the Type 2C configuration, with a stop after the ‘W’ of ‘N.S.W.’ and closed in 1998
context_page_description: Wyangala is a small village in the Lachlan Valley, near the junction of the Abercrombie and Lachlan Rivers, just below the Wyangala Dam wall. It is in the South West Slopes of New South Wales, Australia, and about 320 km west of the state capital, Sydney.
  The village was named after an indigenous word of unknown meaning, thought to be of Wiradjuri origin. The Wiradjuri were the original inhabitants of the Lachlan Valley, with campsites along river flats, on open land and by rivers. Their traditional way of life was altered, and perhaps lost, following the exploration of the valley by British explorers, John Oxley and George William Evans in 1815. White settlement followed in the 1830s, leading to violent clashes between the Wiradjuri and the settlers.
  The present-day village was established in 1928, during the construction of Wyangala Dam. However, in the same area, there was a scattered pioneering settlement known as Wyangala Flats, which was established in the 1840s. This settlement was submerged under water following the completion of Wyangala Dam in 1935.
  Although Wyangala grew substantially during periods of dam construction, the population dwindled in the subsequent years.
context_section_description: By March 1929, with dam construction underway (see above), up to 60 letters arrived in the village every day or two, whenever a vehicle made the trip from Cowra to Wyangala. With over 350 workers and their families already in the growing village, the lack of a post office or telegraph office was a great inconvenience to the residents. To alleviate this issue, and to provide the residents with a reliable postal service, Wyangala Dam Post Office was opened on 14 March 1929. The newly opened post office stamped mail with a Type 2C postmark, which had a full stop after the ‘W’ of ‘N.S.W.’.
  Throughout the subsequent years, the village post office became an integral part of the Wyangala community, providing the expected postal and, at times, banking services (as an agent for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia). In the post-telegraph era, a manual telephone exchange was also located within the post office.  The postmaster/mistress would run the telephone exchange in conjunction with running the post office. The telephone exchange was automated in the late 1980s and the post office itself was closed in 1998.
  Postmasters/mistresses from the 1970s until closure, included:
  Ken and Peggy Bloomfield (1970s)
  Rosa and Graham Parr (1970s to early 1980s)
  Geoff and Vicki Scott (early to mid 1980s)
  Jim and Yvonne Thomas (mid 1980s to late 1980s)
  Peter Raudonkis (1990s)
  Wyangala Dam Public School was established not long after the opening of the village post office, in 1929. At the time it was the district's second school. Since establishment, the school has been located at three different sites around the village.  The first was near the present-day bowling club, and then near the Vic Roworth Conference Center, and finally during the 1960s, it was moved to its current location on Waugoola Road. Notably, there was an earlier school at Wyangala, which was established 22 years prior.  This school ran for six years and closed in 1913.
  The number of children attending the school has varied widely over the years, ranging from 70+ in 1930, to 160 in the 1960s, to 20+ in the early 1980s, to under 10 in the 2000s.
  The first church in Wyangala was a small building made from timber and corrugated iron, built during the construction of the 1935 dam. As with the village school, it was originally located near the present-day country club, opposite the bowling green. After the dam was completed, the church was purchased by Mr Bert Priddle and transported to a property near Grenfell, where it was re-erected and licensed as an Anglican place of worship on 17 November 1935, eventually becoming consecrated by Bishop Wylde on 19 August 1953.
  The current church, St Vincent's, was built at the center of the village under the direction of Aub Murray, with interdenominational help. It is of cinder block construction, with an iron roof. The church was officially opened on 19 November 1954. The day after the opening, as preparations were being made for the first mass, a storm knocked down the rear wall of the church.  Rebuilding the wall delayed the first mass until 5 December 1954.
caption: The Wyangala Dam Post Office first postmark
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