Shepparton Suburb Overview
Shepparton is a city located on the floodplain of the Goulburn River in the north east of Victoria, Australia, approximately 181 kilometres north-east of Melbourne. According to the 2006 Census, the population of the locality was 27,707, while the population of the entire Shepparton-Mooroopna urban centre was 38,773.
It began as a sheep station and river crossing before undergoing a major transformation as a railway town. Today it is an agricultural and manufacturing centre and the centre of the Goulburn Valley irrigation system, one of the largest centres of irrigation in Australia. It is a major regional service city and is the civic administration centre for the City of Greater Shepparton. The Greater Shepparton urban area includes surrounding centres of Tatura, Merrigum, Mooroopna, Murchison, Dookie, and Grahamvale.
The name of Shepparton is derived from the surname of the town’s first settler Sherbourne Sheppard.
It is sometimes imagined the name is from Shepperton in England, but this is not the case.
Prior to the European settlement of Australia, it was thought to be inhabited by the Yorta Yorta Nation people Indigenous Australian tribe.
The Yorta Yorta people are the Indigenous Australians who traditionally lived around the junction of the Goulburn and Murray Rivers in present-day northeast Victoria.
Yorta Yorta Family Groups include the Bangerang, Kailtheban, Wollithiga, Moira, Ulupna, Kwat Kwat, Yalaba Yalaba and Nguaria-iiliam-wurrung clans. The Yorta Yorta Nation is the Nation and the local tribe is Kailtheban for the Shepparton area.
The language is referred to generally as the Yorta Yorta language.
Major Thomas Mitchell was the first European to travel through the area in 1835. Mitchell recommended it as a site for Joseph Hawdon and Charles Bonney to camp at the Goulburn River on route from Albury, New South Wales to Adelaide, South Australia.
The first permanent settlement in the area was by squatter Edward Khull at Tallygaroopna which a man named Sherbourne Sheppard was to take over two years later. Sheppards holding developed into a village adjacent to the Goulburn River known as “Sheppardton”. During the 1850s, the nearby village was a popular river crossing point for miners travelling from the Bendigo goldfields to the new finds in the Beechworth area. As there was no bridge to link either sides of the Goulburn River, entrepreneur Patrick Macguire set up a punt service in 1850 and the settlement became known as “Sheppardton or Macguire’s Punt”. A Post Office opened on 1 February 1854 and closed in July of that year.
In 1855, it was first surveyed on the site just east of the river and carried the official present shortened spelling. At that point it consisted. The post office reopened on 1 May 1858. Shepparton was declared a town in September 1860. It remained a small settlement of rudimentary huts through the 1870s despite adding a police station and in 1873, the first general store, Rowe’s, blacksmith, foundry and a public hall which remains the city’s oldest building. The first bridge over the Goulburn at Shepparton was completed at the Fryers Street entrance in 1878 and the first church, St Patrick’s, opened in 1879.
Nearby Suburbs
