Dalwallinu
Postcode: 6609
Dalwallinu, Western Australia is a Wheatbelt town located 248 km from Perth via the Great Northern Highway. Agriculture and supporting industries are the town’s primary economic activities. The town is also the first town on The Wildflower Way, a world-famous Western Australian tourist route which stretches north to Mullewa.
Settlers arrived in the Dalwallinu district as late as 1907. The settlers had been attracted to the area by its potential for sheep grazing and wheat growing and by the inevitably push northwards from the already settled areas around Northam, Moora and Goomalling.
The town was named after an Aboriginal word with supposedly meant ‘grass land’ and the Dalwallinu Road Board was established in 1916.
Life in the area was hard. The first crop of wheat was planted by hand (using a forked stick with wooden spikes) in 1910.
There is nothing of particular historic interest in the town. The inevitably bulk loading facilities are located a few kilometres to the north of the town.
The town has quite a pleasant park for picnics and the local ‘A Tourist’s Guide to Dalwallinu’ (available at the Shire Offices in Johnson Street) lists the attractions of the area as Xantippe (which is part of the Kalannie Heritage Trail of buildings constructed in the 1920s and 1930s), the rocks and flowers at Jibberding, the White Wells for watering sheep on the road to Paynes Find and the Old Well, built in 1909, which stands at the southern end of the town as a reminder of the importance water supply plays in this region where the average annual rainfall is no more than 356 mm.