Location
Goulburn is a regional city in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia approximately 195 kilometres south-west of Sydney, Australia, and 90 kilometres north-east of Canberra. It was proclaimed as Australia’s first inland city through letters patent by Queen Victoria in 1863.
Goulburn is a railhead on the Main Southern line, a service centre for the surrounding pastoral industry, and also stopover for those travelling on the Hume Highway. It has a central park and many historic buildings. It is also home to the monument the Big Merino, a sculpture that is the world’s largest concrete constructed sheep. (wikipedia)
History
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 Mulwaree People are the original people of the land they belonged to the Ngunawal and Gandangara language groups, 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 Goulburn area). The process displaced the local indigenous Mulwaree population and the introduction of exotic livestock drove out a large part of the Aboriginal peoples’ food supply.
The Mulwaree People lived throughout the area covering Goulburn, Crookwell and Yass. and belong to the Ngunawal language group. To the north of Goulburn Gundungurra was spoken within the lands of the Dharawal People. This was due to Gundungurra people of the Blue Mountains being driven south from their traditional land due to Governor Macquarie’s parties sent to massacre the Dharawal and Gundungurra People.
Their neighbours were the Dharawal to their north and Dharug surrounding Sydney, Darkinung, Wiradjuri Ngunawal and Thurrawal, (eastwards) peoples. The reduction of the food supply and the 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 to their traditional lands.
The first recorded settler in Goulburn established ‘Strathallan’ in 1825 (on the site of the present Police Academy) 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 (where coach horses were changed) for Cobb & Co by 1855. A police station opened the following year and a school in 1858. Goulburn was proclaimed a municipal government in 1859 and was made a city in 1863.
The arrival of the railway in 1869, which was opened on 27 May by the Governor Lord Belmore (an event commemorated by Belmore Park in the centre of the city), along with the completion of the line from Sydney to Albury in 1883, was a boon to the city. Later branchlines were constructed to Cooma (opened in 1889) and later extended further to Nimmitabel and then to Bombala, and to Crookwell and Taralga. Goulburn became a major railway centre with a roundhouse and engine servicing facilities and a factory which made pre-fabricated concrete components for signal boxes and station buildings. The roundhouse is now the Goulburn Rail Heritage Centre with steam, diesel and rolling stock exhibits. CFCL Australia operate the Goulburn Railway Workshops.
St Saviour’s Cathedral, designed by Edmund Thomas Blacket, was completed in 1884 with the tower being added in 1988 to commemorate the Bicentenary of Australia. Though completed in 1884, some earlier burials are in the graveyard adjacent to the Cathedral. St Saviour’s is the seat of the Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn. The Church of SS Peter and Paul is the former cathedral for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn.
The Goulburn Viaduct was built in 1915 replacing an earlier structure. This brick arch railway viaduct spanning the Mulwaree Ponds is the longest on the Main Southern railway line and consists of 13 arches each spanning 13.1 m. (wikipedia)
Places of Interest
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