History of Trayning, A: The Shire’s Contribution to the Development of Western Australia’s Eastern Wheatbelt

WEST AUSTRALIANA AGRICULTURE

ix, 306 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 26 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 282-287) and index. #270723 First Edition. (Name on title page – connection with district.)

Wheat trade — Western Australia — History.  |  Trayning Region (W.A.) — History.  |  Trayning Region (W.A.) — Social life and customs.

Trayning is a town in the north-eastern Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, 236 kilometres (147 mi) east of the state capital, Perth, on the Nungarin–Wyalkatchem Road. At the 2006 census, Trayning had a population of 122.^[2]

When the Dowerin to Merredin railway was planned in 1910, Trayning was selected as the site for a siding. Land was set aside for a townsite to be named Trayning Siding in 1910, but when it was surveyed and gazetted in 1912 it was named Trayning. The townsite is named after Trayning Well, the Aboriginal name of a nearby water source on an old road from Goomalling to the eastern goldfields. It was first recorded by a surveyor in 1892, and allegedly derives from the Aboriginal word During meaning “snake in the grass by the campfire”.^[3]

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.^[4] Trayning was one of the first five locations of bulk wheat transport on the Western Australian Government Railways and consequently one of the starting points of the Co-operative Bulk Handling system of grain receival points.^[5][6]

The Trayning to Merredin railway line has been designated a Tier 3 line in the wheatbelt railway network, and was closed in October 2013.^[7][8]