National School Memorial Cairn

Address: O.I Bell Drive, Gundagai

After a campaign by local residents for a Government School, The National School was created on the floodplain in 1850. It was a two room schoolhouse with a loft and included accommodation for the teachers. The teachers appointed to the school were Joseph McKenna from Ireland and his Glasgow born wife Elizabeth who arrived in Australia in 1842.

Since early settlement, Aboriginal people had warned Europeans of the great floods that swept the Murrumbidgee. In June of 1852, the Murrumbidgee rose 12 metres in the early hours. A wall of water cascaded through the entire town. Most people were thrown into the darkness of the raging torrent. The torrent collapsed the walls of the schoolhouse, drowning the whole McKenna family and their two boarders.

This Cairn commemorates the destruction by flood of the National School and the drowning of Headmaster Joseph McKenna, his wife Elizabeth, their five children - also the other 80-100 Gundagai residences who perished in the flood.