In recent months, Balranald has lost two of its oldest and most active community members; Adrian and Pat Gorman (pictured).

Adrian passed away on August 14, just eight weeks after Pat, his wife and soulmate of 70 years.

They were immensely proud of their eight children, 28 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren.

Adrian was the youngest of the five children of Richard and Kathleen Gorman who had moved from Berrigan to take up ‘Meilman’ Station, near Euston, in 1926.

Adrian spent his early childhood at ‘Meilman’ on the banks of the River Murray and completed his secondary education as a boarder at Xavier College in Melbourne.

He moved to ‘Willow Vale’ in the Balranald district in 1950. In 1954, he married Patricia Anne Daly, the daughter of a medical doctor from Sydney.

Adrian was an independent thinker who was engaged in community activities throughout his long life.

He took action where he identified a community need, such as initiating the Abercrombie Pumping Scheme in 1959 that ultimately supplied stock and domestic water to 15 properties between Hay, Moulamein and Balranald.

In 1968, he also purchased a bus to take his and other children from properties east of Balranald into school.

Adrian was also willing to enthusiastically take up new projects at various times in his life, such as learning to weld in his 70s in order to produce ‘sculptures’ from parts of discarded farm machinery and other scrap metal.

He was an active participant in a range of sports at different stages of his life – VFL for Euston as a youth, cricket for Euston and Balranald, tennis and golf. This included involvement in the construction and maintenance of tennis courts, golf links and bowling greens.

Lawn bowls became a great passion from around 1980. In later years, he and Pat enjoyed regular card games with Balranald friends.

Adrian had a life-long passion for the history of the district.

He believed district history to be a valuable but under-utilised community asset.

He was also concerned that the loss of local knowledge and social memory would weaken community resilience and its ability to deal with future crises.

In his last years, he self-published three books that record the changes he had seen during his life.

However, long before that, he had taken action to record and promote local history.

In 1982, he chaired a committee that received a grant from the Commonwealth Schools Commission Country Areas Program (CAP) to establish a program for district schools to study Australian history from local perspectives.

It enabled district school children to examine first-hand local links to Australian history through excursions and the use of local resources such as newspaper files, historic photographs and senior residents.

Children recorded stories, produced booklets, developed board-games and participated in plays to ‘bring history to life’.

The Balranald, Euston, Tooleybuc History Project was developed by David Eastburn.

This began a productive 42-year collaboration with Adrian to record the history of the district; to highlight its natural, cultural and environmental assets, and to honour its people by telling their stories.

A later collaboration that Adrian was most proud of was the Balranald and district Military Heritage Walk consisting of 47 story-signs honouring local service men and women and eight larger contextual signs.

It was triggered by a booklet Adrian compiled in 2005, titled Balranald Boys of the Skies about local airmen who served in WWII.

The process made him aware that their stories, and even the stories of those whose names were listed on the local war memorial, were increasingly being forgotten.

The centenary of World War I provided an opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of all members of the community – men, women and children - to war efforts.

It included stories about the actions of community members both at home and at the front in all wars.

The long collaboration directly and indirectly included the production of 120 interpretive signs in the district (at Balranald, Maude village and Yanga National Park); studies of the natural, cultural, economic and political histories of the lower Murrumbidgee floodplain wetlands; major histories of district pastoral stations (‘Paika’, ‘Clare’, and the people associated with ‘Clare’); and numerous booklets, discussion papers and newspaper articles.

The benefits of the collaboration were two-way. The contacts made and lessons learnt from the Balranald, Euston, Tooleybuc History Project helped in the development of the Murray-Darling Basin primary schools’ environmental education – literacy – intergenerational equity program, Special forever.

That unique writing and art program, involving up to 38.000 children per year, operated throughout the million-square-kilometre Murray-Darling Basin between 1993 and 2010.

Adrian was a successful grazier-farmer as evidenced by the fact that after supporting eight children through boarding school and university, he still owned his property!

However, he was very happy to hand over the operation of ‘Willow Vale’ to his eldest son Terry, in order to pursue other interests, including overseas travel.

Adrian’s enthusiastic and inquisitive temperament appeared to reflect the most positive aspects of his Irish ancestry.

However, the actions of his great-uncle Emanual E J Gorman of Berrigan, also made him aware that community members could take the initiative and ‘make a difference’.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, E J Gorman played strategic roles in conferences at Corowa which led to the achievement of Australian Federation and to the sharing of the waters of the River Murray.

Adrian was unafraid to put forward big ideas, but this was combined with a willingness to work with others to modify them and to use his time and networks to bring them to fruition.

In recognition of his lifetime of active involvement in, and services to, the Balranald community, he was awarded the Balranald Australia Day Citizen of the Year in 2019, followed in 2024 by an Order of Australia Medal.

Every rural community needs at least one Adrian Gorman, supported by a very understanding Pat: Vale.