During World War I, recruitment marches or snowball marches to state capital cities were a feature of volunteer recruiting drives for the Australian Imperial Force in rural Australia. Between October 1915 and February 1916, nine marches were held starting from various points in the state; the most notable was the first march from Gilgandra, New South Wales, known as the Cooee march. The March of the Dungarees took place in south-eastern Queensland in November 1915. In 1918, in an effort to promote recruitment, another march was staged, but this was less spontaneous and the marchers in fact travelled by train.

Gilgandra is a country town in the Orana region of New South Wales, Australia, and services the surrounding agricultural area where wheat is grown extensively together with other cereal crops, and sheep and beef cattle are raised. Sitting at the junction of the Newell, Oxley and Castlereagh highways, the town is located in a wide bend of the Castlereagh River downstream from its source near Coonabarabran, directly downstream from Mendooran, and upstream from Gulargambone and Coonamble. It is 432 km north-west of Sydney, and is located approximately halfway on the inland route from Melbourne to Brisbane. The town is the administrative seat of the Gilgandra Shire. It is known as the town of windmills and the home of the 'Coo-ees', and is a gateway to the Warrumbungles National Park.