Walcha () is a town at the south-eastern edge of the Northern Tablelands, New South Wales, Australia.
The town serves as the seat of Walcha Shire. Walcha is located by road from Sydney at the intersection of the Oxley Highway and Thunderbolts Way. The Apsley River passes through the town to tumble over the Apsley Falls before joining the Macleay River further on. Originally the river caused flooding in the town prior to a levee bank being constructed and saving the town from more floods. At the , Walcha had a population of 1,451 people.
The Main North railway line is located west at a separate village called Walcha Road which serves as the railhead. This is served by the daily NSW TrainLink Xplorer service between Sydney and Armidale. The railway line was built at Walcha Road, because it was the closest point they could get to the town, due to the steep climb over the Great Dividing Range.
History
The area was occupied by the Dhanggati (or Dunghutti) People for 6000 years prior to European settlement. The tablelands had places for ceremonies and trade of goods, and there are traces of bora grounds near Walcha. In the colder months, tribes retreated to the gorge country to the east, where fish and animals were plentiful. In 1818, John Oxley was the first European person to discover the area and the falls which were later to be named Apsley Falls.
Hamilton Collins Sempill was the first settler in the New England area when he took up the 'Wolka' run in 1832, establishing slab huts where 'Langford' now stands. Other early runs around the district were Bergen-op-Zoom (1834), Ohio (1836), Europambela (c.1836), Surveyor’s Creek (1836), Emu Creek (c.1837), Ingalba (1837), Orandumbie (1837), Tiara (1837) and Winterbourne (1837). A severe depression from 1841 to 1843, and low demand for wool created hardship for many of these early settlers. In 1848 Walcha run is recorded as being and in the lease of David Lanarch. During 1854 Walcha was sold to Rundle and Dangar who held the mortgage for Jamison and Connal. Later John Fletcher acquired Walcha and moved from Branga Plains to Oorundumby. After being sold in 1905, Oorundumby was resumed for soldier settlement in 1947 and subdivided into 22 holdings. Not long after Sempill's arrival, in 1834, John McLean took up a run he called Bergen op Zoom, reportedly named in tribute to relatives Allen and Francis McLean, who had assisted the Dutch in the defence of that town against the French in the War of the Sixth Coalition. When McLean died in 1851, his family sold Bergen Op Zoom to Shropshire-born artist Edward Baker-Boulton, who with his brothers already owned extensive runs in the Wellington district. Baker-Boulton was typical of the absentee owners of large stations, living for the most part in Sydney or 'back home' in the UK, the station being run as a partnership with David Bell, until 1874 when Bell left to take over management of his own holdings in the district. Baker-Boulton then returned from England to manage the station hands-on, and died there, aged 83, in 1895, where he is buried in the Walcha Cemetery. He was a noted artist of the early Colonial period whose works are largely forgotten now. Edith, the eldest daughter of his second wife, Rachel Gwyn, who visited Walcha in 1890, was the mother of renowned English children's author, Arthur Ransome, whose bucolic Swallows and Amazons series is still in print in the 21st Century. The sixth book in the series, Pigeon Post, was the inaugural winner of the Carnegie Medal in 1936.
A "wool" road to Port Macquarie (the Oxley Highway) was under construction in 1842 for the transportation of wool from New England to the coast. Walcha Post Office opened on 1 July 1850. The mail arrived from Macdonald River (now Bendemeer). Walcha was gazetted as a village site in 1852, when town allotments were sold, with annual sales following. At that time there was a blacksmith's shop, a general store and a flour mill. A Roman Catholic chapel was erected in 1854, a police station and the first Presbyterian church was built in 1857 and the Walcha Central School in 1859.
In 1861 the population was recorded at 355 and the Anglican church was built in 1862 of stone taken from the demolished homestead, 'Villa Walcha', erected on the Wolka run in the 1840s. The old church has fine stained-glass windows which bear tribute to some of the town's pioneers.