it is also situated: The location of the current township of Bourke is on a bend in the Darling River on the traditional country of the Ngemba people.

Having struck the region during an intense drought and a low river, Sturt dismissed the area as largely uninhabitable and short of any features necessary for establishing reliable industry on the land.

British pastoral settlement failed to occur for many years in the vicinity due to the large distances from the colonised areas and the strong resistance from the local Aboriginal population.

[4] It wasn't until 1859 when British colonists were able to gain a foothold along the Upper Darling, with the arrival of paddle steamers making river transportation and trade to the southern settlements seasonally viable.

[7][8][9] As the pastoralist industry expanded around Bourke, the town rapidly grew into a busy river port, with paddle steamers shipping large quantities of stock and wool south to Echuca, from where the railway extension allowed further transportation to Melbourne.

In this semi-arid outback landscape, sheep farming along with some small irrigated cotton crops comprise the primary industry in the area today.

Dispossessed of their traditional country and in occasional conflict with white settlers, they battled a loss of land and culture and were hit hard by European disease.

While the population of the local Ngemba and Barkindji people around the town of Bourke had dwindled by the late 19th century, many continued to live a traditional lifestyle in the region.

[12] In 1962 in Perth, local high jumper Percy Hobson became the first person of Aboriginal descent to win a Commonwealth Games gold medal for Australia.

This is reflected in a traditional east coast Australian expression "back o' Bourke", from the poem by Scottish-Australian poet and bush balladeer Will H. Ogilvie.

[28] In 1892 a young writer Henry Lawson was sent to Bourke by the Bulletin editor J. F. Archibald to get a taste of outback life and to try to curb his heavy drinking.

In 1992 eight poems, written under a pseudonym and published in the Western Herald, were discovered in the Bourke library archives and confirmed to be Lawson's work.

[29] Bush poets Harry 'Breaker' Morant (1864–1902) and Will H. Ogilvie (1869–1963) also spent time in the Bourke region and based much of their work on the experience.

[35] In February 2022, ABC Radio's national current affairs program The World Today detailed numerous allegations of local health workers being routinely abused, threatened and attacked by patients at Bourke Hospital.

[35] A lead organiser with the New South Wales Nurses and Midwives' Association said the violence against health workers in Bourke was emblematic of the issues facing such staff in remote areas.

[35] She claimed administration staff from the front office were being called on to check on patients in the aged care wing because there was an insufficient number of nurses.

[35] In a statement, Western New South Wales Local Health District chief executive Mark Spittal said his organisation had a zero tolerance of threatening or criminal behaviour and was working with Bourke Shire Council, various agencies and community leaders to address the issues.

The local paper, The Western Herald, is published on a weekly basis (every Thursday) year-round, except during a short break at Christmas.