​Gunnedah sits at the junction of the Namoi and Mooki Rivers on the North West Slopes of NSW. It boasts two heroes of a very different kind. One is Cumbo Gunnerah, 'The Red Kangaroo' as he was called by his people, a great warrior and revered leader of the Gunn-e-dar people of the Kamilaroi tribe. He was born, lived and died a child of the wilderness, long before the white men came.
 
The other is Dorothea McKellar, daughter of native-born parents, who grew up protected and highly cultured, moving easily between three worlds - the society of Sydney's elite, her brothers' farms near Gunnedah and among family friends in London. She is best known for her bush poetry.
 
They couldn’t be more contrasting figures and yet they shared much in common. The Bush spoke to them both. The fabled war chief hunted far and wide across his native territory between the New England Ranges and the Warrumbungle Mountains – he read it like a book.
 
The accomplished city girl learned the beauties and terrors of her wide brown land as she rode the same mountains and Breeza Plains on horseback. Both were intelligent and proficient in several languages. In their own ways, both understood the spirit of the land.

​Picture a small, moustachioed Frenchman sitting alone for a whole night in a solitary vigil in the darkened chapel of Rugby School in England. Baron Pierre de Coubertin had made a pilgrimage across the Channel just to sit before the tomb of Rugby School’s visionary Headmaster and it had a powerful effect. He wrote, “My eyes fixed on the funeral slab on which, without epitaph, the great name of Thomas Arnold was inscribed. I dreamed that I saw before me the cornerstone of the British Empire."
 
That night of reflection lit the flame for the modern Olympics.
 
Twelve-year-old Pierre had discovered the charismatic headmaster through reading a French translation of Thomas Hughes’ novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays in the 1870’s. Hughes himself was an enthusiastic product of Rugby and his best seller spread the gospel of Thomas Arnold’s brave educational experiment far and wide.