Goulburn Suburb Overview
Goulburn is a regional city in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately 195 kilometres south-west of Sydney, Australia, and 90 kilometres north-east of Canberra. Goulburn brands itself as “Australia’s first inland city”, although this is a claim that the city of Bathurst also makes, As of Census night 2011, Goulburn had a population of 21,092 people. Goulburn is the seat of Goulburn Mulwaree Council.
Goulburn is a railhead on the Main Southern line and service centre for the surrounding pastoral industry and a stopover for those travelling on the Hume Highway. It has a central park and many historic buildings. It is also home to the Big Merino, the world’s largest concrete sheep.
Goulburn is located a small distance east of the peak ridge of the Great Dividing Range and is 690 metres above sea-level. It is intersected by the Wollondilly River and the Mulwaree River, and the confluence of these two rivers is also located here, which then flows north east, into Lake Burragorang and eventually into the ocean via the Hawkesbury River.
Goulburn has a variable, though generally dry climate with temperatures averaging from 11.4 degree Celsius in July to 27.6 degrees Celsius in January. There are an average of 74.6 days of rain each year providing an average of 640.9mm.
With a history of water shortages, Goulburn has recently constructed an 80 km long underground water pipeline to pump water from Wingecarribee Reservoir in the Southern Highlands.
Goulburn was named by surveyor James Meehan after Henry Goulburn, Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies, and the name was ratified by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. The Aboriginal name for Goulburn is Burbong, a Murring/ Wiradjuri word indicating a special Indigenous cultural area.
The colonial government made land grants to free settlers such as Hamilton Hume in the Goulburn area from the opening of the area to settlement in about 1820. Land was later sold to settlers within the Nineteen Counties, including Argyle County . The process displaced the local indigenous Gandangara population and the introduction of exotic livestock drove out a large part of the Aborigines’ food supply. The reduction of the food supply and the accidental introduction of exotic diseases, substantially reduced the local indigenous population. Some local Aborigines survived at the Tawonga Billabong Aboriginal Settlement established under the supervision of the Tarago police. In the 1930s the local billabong dried up and the Aboriginal people moved away although some have, over time, made their way back.
The first recorded settler in Goulburn established ‘Strathallan’ in 1825 and a town was originally surveyed in 1828, although moved to the present site of the city in 1833 when the surveyor Robert Hoddle laid it out.
George Johnson purchased the first land in the area between 1839 and 1842 and became a central figure in the town’s development. He established a branch store with a liquor licence in 1848. By 1841 Goulburn had a population of some 1,200 – a courthouse, police barracks, churches, hospital and post office and was the centre of a great sheep and farming area.
A telegraph station opened in 1862, by which time there were about 1,500 residents, a blacksmith ‘s shop, two hotels, two stores, the telegraph office and a few cottages. The town was a change station for Cobb & Co by 1855. A police station opened the following year and a school in 1858. Goulburn was proclaimed a town with municipal government in 1859.
Goulburn holds the unique distinction of being proclaimed a City on two occasions. The first, unofficial, proclamation was claimed by virtue of Royal Letters Patent issued by Queen Victoria on 14 March 1863 to establish the Diocese of Goulburn. It was a claim made for ecclesiastical purposes, as it was required by the traditions of the Church of England. The Letters Patent also established St Saviour
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