Public school, Werris Creek, Mt. Terrible in the distance.

[Title from manuscript caption beneath image]. Oil painting on semi-opaque celluloid sheet with embossed geometric border, 47 x 80 mm (image), 76 x 111 mm (sheet); recto captioned by the artist beneath the image ‘Public school, Werris Creek, Mt. Terrible in the distance’; verso inscribed in the same hand ‘To Dear Rosa from H, Many happy returns of your Birthday, May 1891’; the painting has a couple of tiny spots of surface loss, but is otherwise in excellent condition, likewise the celluloid backing.

Werris Creek is situated on the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales, just north of Quirindi, and takes its name from the Kamilaroi word werai, meaning ‘a lookout point’. European settlers first arrived in the district in the 1830s; when the railway station was completed in 1879, Werris Creek was dubbed ‘the first railway town in Australia’.

Depicted in this charming naive painting is Werris Creek Public School. Established in the 1880s, it was the township’s first school, and remains its only one today.