For a long time, Australian aborigines from the Barkindji tribe lived in what is now Wilcannia . The first European ranchers settled here in the 1850s. The place was then still called Mt Murchison Station . Wilcannia was officially founded on June 28, 1866 and by the 1880s (then known as the "Queen city of the west" ) developed into a major port on the Darling River with a population of more than 3,000. Wilcannia's importance began to wane in the 1920s with the decline of cargo shipping, whose tasks were taken over by rail and road transport.
tourism
Some sandstone buildings date from the city's heyday around 1880. From the official side are touted as worth seeing:
the Athenaeum Library , built in 1883 and now the Pioneer Museum ,
the Wilcannias cemetery, where you can find the graves of several pioneers of the early days,
the historic bridge over the Darling River from 1896,
the Paroo – Darling National Park, about 60 km from Wilcannia.