It is 96 kilometres (60 mi) east of Bourke and west of Walgett on the Kamilaroi Highway, and 787 km from Sydney.

Other towns and villages in the Brewarrina district include: Goodooga, Gongolgon, Weilmoringle, and Angledool.

[citation needed] In 1859 a riverboat called Gemini, skippered by William Randell, reached the town.

This opened the possibility of developing the town as a port, and by the early 1860s Brewarrina was recognised as the furthest navigable point on the Darling River.

On 15 December 1914, Wandering Jew was lost due to a fire on Barwon River, Brewarrina.

[12] "The Wandering Jew represents an earlier maritime era and provides a direct link to the riverine heritage of Brewarrina.

[11] The impetus for Brewarrina bridge, was to capture the New South Wales wool trade from the river paddle steamers and direct it away from Melbourne and Adelaide to Sydney.

[26] Coffey, Winters, Gordon, and Phil Eyre were called upon by the local government and State Emergency Service (SES) to mobilise the Aboriginal community to build levees.

The SES denied discrimination on racial grounds, saying that two boats had been flown in, but the first priority use was to link the town with its railway station and airport.

[27] After the SES would not guarantee boats for the Dodge residents, Winters pulled the Aboriginal workers off the levee.

[21] On 23 January Gordon contacted the newly-established Chinese embassy in Canberra,[28][29] which led to a national media response.

[30] This came a few days after the announcement by Prime Minister Bob Hawke of a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, on 10 August 1987.

[31][32] Both the riot and the five-year trials that followed were widely covered by the press,[33][34] and had continuing legal impact for years afterwards.

[30] Yetta Dhinnakkal Centre, a minimum-security outdoor prison for young Indigenous men that ran an award-winning program,[35] opened in 2000 and closed in 2020.

It is believed that Ngemba, Wonkamurra, Wailwan and Gomolaroi people have shared and maintained the traps for thousands of years.

[7][40][41] Brewarrina Ngemba Billabong has been declared a World Conservation Union (IUCN) Category V and VI protected area.

[42] The ready availability of fish made Brewarrina one of the great intertribal meeting places of pre-European eastern Australia.

In the 1930s, the APA undertook more forced removals of Aboriginal people from different groups, bringing them to the already overcrowded mission from as far away as 350 mi (560 km).

[38] The Welfare Board tried to move the mission residents into the town, with the aim of cultural assimilation, but no rental homes were available to Aboriginal people, and the council worked against integration.

The Welfare Board then announced a small new reserve, comprising 30 cheap houses built on an exposed, treeless hill within half a mile of the town, which they called West Brewarrina, and in 1965 all of the mission residents were moved there.

Steve Gordon (born c.1948) worked to improve conditions for Aboriginal people living in West Brewarrina and against barriers to employment in the town.

Other towns and villages in the Brewarrina district include: Goodooga, Gongolgon, Weilmoringle, and Angledool.

[48] The Brewarrina radar station (29°58′S 146°49′E / 29.96°S 146.81°E / -29.96; 146.81) at the local airport was constructed from July 2020 to provide better weather forecasts for the area and farming community.

Brewarrina also hosted the unique "Surfboat Classic", which attracted a number of Surf Life Saving Clubs from the New South Wales Coast.

This was celebrated by a week long festival which included: Brewarrina Race Club meeting with over 2000 attendees, Bre Big Fish Competition, street parade and carnival, film festival, historical exhibitions, black tie ball, fireworks display, flower and cake show, as well as a number of celebratory sporting fixtures including rugby league and rugby union exhibition matches, clay target shooting and bowling competition.