Singleton and

Patrick's Plains

The town was gazetted as a post town in 1841 despite press reports that in Singleton 'bad liquor, high charges and drunkenness still prevail. Social harmony is more that ever out of tune, over reaching and undermining, bro-beating and back-biting being the order, or rather disorder of the day.' Sydney Herald June 30, 1841. However some years later W. Morrison was to describe ‘the town (as) well built and prosperous …All kinds of crops grow here to perfection. The price paid for good sections of farming lands is enormous, sometimes reaching as high as sixty pound an acre’ . By 1881 the Newcastle Directory and Almanac for that year wrote that "Singleton is the head assize town of the pastoral and agricultural district of Patrick's Plains, and can boast some of the largest and handsomest buildings in the Northern district.'

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I maintain extensive data bases and resources for the Singleton and Patrick's plains area of New South Wales.

Note! Also refer to my historical notes for background information regarding Singleton

Note ! Some of the data base links are quite large and may take time to load.

On the George Street side of the Singleton Historical museum is the Boer War memorial to Herbert W. Waddell.  Herbert, along with other volunteers from Singleton embarked from Sydney for England on the SS Ninevah on the 3rd. March 1899. They were members of the New South Wales Lancers. Lieut.-Colonel P. L. Murray in the Official Records of the Australian Military Contingents to the War in South Africa, in  1911 later described these volunteers as ‘a superior class of individuals, from whom considerable was to be expected'. Trooper Waddell was killed in action defending the rail head at Pienaars River some six weeks before his squadron was to commence embarkation for home. He was twenty eight . The Presbyterian chaplain ,the  Rev. J. H. G. Auld on the September 28, wrote:

‘ I was told that a dead(man) had been brought in...Trooper H. W .Waddell ..Poor chap. He was sick and not allowed to go out with the patrol but  when he knew there was a fight on he went out...He was shot through the heart...In the evening...buried Waddell and a Boer, reading the one service for the both. It was strange thing that we should stand around the grave of our comrade and our enemy and commit their bodies to the ground together-had a cross put on Waddell’s grave.’[10]

 Hebbie was the only local casualty of a war where 518 Australian died and some 16,000 served. Later day historian have argued that his memorial stand along with others of its kind as a ‘memorial to the early death of republicanism and separatism’

See also : Singleton, Waddell and the Boer War