Curlewis is a parish and a rural village on the Kamilaroi Highway

Kamilaroi Highway

Kamilaroi Highway is a state highway in New South Wales. It has been given the national route number 37. Its status as a highway is fairly new....

, 16 kilometres south of Gunnedah, New South Wales

Gunnedah, New South Wales

Gunnedah is a town and Local government area in north-eastern New South Wales, Australia. 7,542 people lived in the town of Gunnedah in 2006, including 931 indigenous people ....

 in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. The village boundaries are in the Gunnedah Shire local government area of the North West Slopes portion of the New England region.

History

Curlewis was founded by Henry Thomas Pike, a sawmiller from Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

 who became the mayor of Gunnedah.

In 1909 the railway station opened as a stop on the Mungindi branch line, but has since closed. Livestock

Livestock

Livestock refers to one or more domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber and labor. The term "livestock" as used in this article does not include poultry or farmed fish; however the inclusion of these, especially poultry, within the meaning...

 sales commenced in 1919 in Curlewis and were, for many years, held in alternate weeks at Gunnedah and Curlewis until improvements to the Gunnedah saleyards, eclipsed Curlewis's yardings and led to yard’s closure.

The lack of a nearby river has contributed to Curlewis having persistent water problems and water shortage. In 1950, the council had to desilt an old earthen dam and erect a tank from which Curlewis residents could draw water. Reticulated water was connected to Curlewis in 1972.

Population

In the 2006 census, Curlewis had a resident population of 603 people: 53.4% were males and 46.6% were females. There were 12.8% indigenous persons, compared with 2.3% indigenous persons in Australia. The most common forms of employment for residents were in education 5.6%, sheep, beef cattle and grain farming 5.1% and coal mining 4.6%.

Curlewis now has a hotel, a public school (with 49 pupils enrolled), a general store, grain silo, police station, sports ground, Rural Fire Service

New South Wales Rural Fire Service

The New South Wales Rural Fire Service is a volunteer-based firefighting agency and statutory body of the NSW Government. The NSW RFS is responsible for the general administration of rural fire management affairs including administration of the Rural Fire Fighting Fund, co-ordination with local...

 and a ceramics studio.

The Culewis area is home to a large koala

Koala

The koala is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia, and the only extant representative of the family Phascolarctidae....

population and they may be seen on local farms, in the woodlands and village.