Dowerin, Western Australia 4.32

Dowerin is a town and shire 156km north-east of Perth in the central Wheatbelt region of Western Australia.HistoryIn 1906 the government extended the railway from Goomalling to the developing Dowerin Agricultural Area and decided to develop a townsite at the terminus. The Aboriginal name of the site chosen was "Wuguni", but "Dowerin", also an Aboriginal name, was already in local use for the place, and was the name gazetted in 1907. The name is derived from nearby Lake Dowerin, first recorded on maps around 1879. One source suggests dowerin is the Aboriginal word for the twenty-eight parrot (dow-arn), and another suggests it means "place of the throwing stick" (dower).In 1932 the Wheat Pool of Western Australia announced that the town would have two grain elevators, each fitted with an engine, installed at the railway siding.Field DayDowerin is home to the Dowerin GWN Field Days, currently a two-day annual event (held in the last week of August) showcasing agricultural and associated equipment, as well as providing information and services to people from rural areas. The Field Days attracts on average in excess of 600 exhibitors as well as over 15,000 local and national visitors each day.The event was first held as the Dowerin Machinery Field Day on 3 September 1965, and was the result of meetings by the Dowerin Progress Association the previous year which looked at ideas to prevent the town of Dowerin from becoming a ghost town. Some twenty exhibitors and two thousand visitors attended the first field day, with funds raised from the first event going towards funding the construction of a dam and a grassed tennis court. The event continues to be run and managed by the local community, with three full-time staff and 400 volunteers involved in the event's running each year.