Warialda 'Home of the Tumbledown Gum', is an attractive small town on the Reedy Creek. (download map). Warialda, with a population 1300, is one of the major towns of the Gwydir Shire in north-western NSW. It is situated 602 km north of Sydney and 320 m above sea-level on a tributary creek of the Gwydir River.

Warialda also lies at the intersection of two main roads, being 190 km north of Tamworth along the Fossickers Way and 62 km north-west of Inverell via the Gwydir Highway.

The town's name is said to mean 'place of wild honey' and presumably derives from the tongue of the original inhabitants, the Weraerai Aborigines. The name is thought to be related to the honey that is produced from the abundant pollen of the Tumbledown Gum (Angophora costata), bees collect large to huge volumes of the pollen which provides a good supplus of honey.

The Warialda area received its first official European encounter in 1827 when Allan Cunningham passed through on his overland trek from the Hunter Valley to the Darling Downs. Cunningham reported the existence of a hut in the Warialda area, which may have been constructed by an escaped convict, thus indicating an earlier European presence here.

A police outstation was established here around 1840. The townsite was gazetted in 1849. Two years later the population was recorded as being 45. Warialda became the first administrative centre of the north-west with a mining warden, magistrate and lands commissioner based in the village. The railway arrived in 1901 and the population peaked in 1911 at 1762 but slowly declined thereafter.

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The town was also the birthplace of Elizabeth Kenny (1886-1952) who spent her early childhood here and later dedicated her life to helping children afflicted with infantile paralysis, developing a revolutionary polio treatment program.

She was christened in the font which is now situated in the Anglican Church of Saint Simon and St Jude.
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