Jim Curran

James Lawrence Curran (15 April 1927 – 18 May 2005) was an Australian politician. He was an Australian Labor Party member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1980 to 1981, representing the electorate of Castlereagh.

Curran was born at Gilgandra where his father, Gilbert Curran, had arrived from Horsham, Vic, in 1908 with his own parents, brothers and sisters. While Gilbert Curran's father, Con Curran, had purchased the Royal Hotel in Gilgandra in May 1908, Gilbert himself soon purchased a block of land in early 1909, which had been subdivided from "Berida" station. Jim Curran and his brothers were raised on this farm, named "Bundah" (originally of 3,650 acres) sixteen kilometres from the town. He later attended boarding school at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst, and won a scholarship to attend Armidale Teachers College. He taught variously in Moree, Bourke and Sydney. He met fellow teacher, June Duffy, at Bourke and they were married in Sydney in 1949. In 1957, the year his father died, Jim and his wife took up teaching posts in peninsula Malaya at a company-owned tin-mining town where they made life-long friends from all over the world. At the end of three years they returned to teach in Australia. In the early 1960's Jim gave up teaching to return to Gilgandra to farm, buying out the family property from his brothers. He ran "Bundah" very successfully as a mixed farm, growing wheat and raising sheep and beef. His wife June taught at Gilgandra primary school while he became heavily involved in the local farming community, serving as secretary and president of the United Farmers and Woolgrowers Association in Gilgandra, and being an active member of several farming and breeding groups. He was also a farming commentator for the local ABC station for a period. In 1971, he returned to teaching, running the library at Gilgandra High School and later taking up a position as library adviser to the Western Area for the Department of Education. In this role he had a stint in England on a library research grant. His wife June also taught in the library at Gilgandra High School.

In 1977, Curran became the private secretary to the local MLA, then Treasurer and former Premier Jack Renshaw. Curran and his wife had both become very involved in the Gilgandra branch of the NSW Labor party. His uncle J.G. "Jack" Curran of the Royal Hotel Gilgandra had been president of the Gilgandra ALP branch for several years in the 1940's and 50's and the Curran family were great supporters of the local state Labor MLA, Jack Renshaw. Renshaw had been in parliament for four decades and a senior political figure for three of those, managing to hold the conservative-leaning country seat against Country Party opponents. Renshaw resigned from parliament in January 1980, and endorsed Curran as his successor at the resulting by-election. Curran retained the seat for Labor after a fiercely contested campaign, but a redistribution before the 1981 state election severely hampered his chances of winning a full term. The redistribution had moved a large amount of traditionally National Country Party-voting territory into Castlereagh, and abolished the adjacent seat of Burrendong, held by National Country MLA Roger Wotton. Wotton instead contested Castlereagh, now notionally a National Country seat, and on the new boundaries, succeeded in ousting Curran from the seat.

Curran remained involved in public life after his parliamentary defeat, serving as Manager of Industrial Promotion for New South Wales in New York, and later as the Assistant Commissioner for Western Lands. He died at Gilgandra in 2005.