Kooloonong

Kooloonong is a rural locality 63 km north-west of Swan Hill, in the direction of Robinvale, north-west Victoria. It is thought that the name was derived from an Aboriginal word meaning black snake.

In the early 1920s, in common with neighbouring Annuello, the Kooloonong district was subdivided into unimproved ‘green’ mallee blocks for soldier settlement. Kooloonong was supported by the extension of the railway line from Piangil (1920) and the opening of schools in 1922 and 1929 (Kooloonong West). There were also stock water channels from the Waranga and Grampians systems. As the centre of a large soldier settlement area, Kooloonong had two stores, a boarding house and a hall.

Trouble came with over cultivation, the Depression period, farm incomes and drought. Sand drift clogged the channels, and some were abandoned north-west of Kooloonong during 1941-45. The Kooloonong district became a marginal north-west Mallee problem, adequate for wheat growing but not for sheep, without reliable water supply. Farm consolidations followed.

In 2002 the Northern Mallee Pipeline was completed, replacing delivery of water by open channels. Kooloonong is at the edge of the pipeline’s supply area.

The Kooloonong West school closed in 1953 when the Robinvale consolidated school opened. Kooloonong’s school continued at least until the 1970s. The railway closed in 1986. Kooloonong has a CFA station and silos.

Its census populations have been: