Goulburn

The city of Goulburn, which in 1981 had a population of 21,750, is situated at a height of 652m above sea level at the junction of the Wollondilly River and the Mulwaree Ponds, 139°40' east, and 34°45' south. Named after Henry Goulburn, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, it is the oldest provincial city in Australia, becoming a municipality in 1859, and a, city on 14 March, 1863 when Royal Letters Patent creating the Anglican See, were gazetted. Goulburn is a busy city of commerce, and an administrative centre for a variety of State Government departments and instrumentalities which, in 1982, employed nearly half the local workforce.

Aboriginal Settlement

Two tribes lived in this area the Gandangara, to the north, and the Ngunawal, to the south. The tribal boundary between the two (shown on the accompanying map) cuts through what is now Goulburn City. This boundary, like the others on the map, is based on linguistic differences, and marks only the approximate limits of location of the tribes. Populations tended to concentrate where game, water and other food were relatively plentiful. The Gandangara lived mainly in and around the Burragorang Valley, which was rich in kangaroo; the Ngunawal lived around the Murrumbidgee, south of Canberra, and along the Molonglo near Queanbeyan, and around Lake George.

Because these tribes came into contact with white settlers from the 1820s onwards, much of their language and culture disappeared before anyone alert to their significance could document them. Most of the meagre and fragmented information that is available concerns the Ngunawal; very little is known about the art, customs or traditions of the Gandangara tribe.

The Ngunawal were said to be a very gentle people. Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, an enlightened landowner-magistrate whose influence was felt in and around Collector from the 1830s, was noted for his humane and just treatment of the Aborigines. For their part, the Ngunawal were helpful to the settlers, and peaceful. Violence was rare, and when it did occur, was invariably the result of Europeans usually bushrangers and convicts taking and abusing the Ngunawal women.

Mercifully, the Ngunawal and the Gandangara seem to have escaped the systematic slaughter, poisoning and drowning practised on many other Aboriginal tribes in Australia. Yet their slow death was still horrible: the smallpox epidemic of 1830, the influenza epidemic of 1846-47, and the measles epidemic of the 1860s, not to mention the mortality caused by tuberculosis and venereal disease, caused a catastrophic drop in numbers. As pastoral development destroyed the food chain on which the Aborigines depended, those that survived were faced with slow starvation.

Alexander Harris, in Settlers and convicts (1847) recorded one Goulburn Aboriginal's assessment of the effect of European land use: Plenty water before white man come, plenty pish (fish), plenty kangaroo, plenty possum, plenty everything: now all gone. Poor fellow now, black fellow! By and Bye, that got nothing at all to patter (eat). Then that tumble down" (then he will die)'. The two economies that of the pastoralist and the hunter gatherer could not co-exist.

The Bogong moth (Agrotis infusa) was a vital part of the diet of the Ngunawal. These moths, easily harvested, and highly nutritious, aestivated in their millions in the southern alps, and in the summer months, the Ngunawal grew 'fat, glossy and polished like ebony' from eating them. The moths were eaten after being lightly roasted, and had a taste something like that of a walnut. The Ngunawal were one of a number of tribes who gathered for the moth feasts. By 1878, however, the impact of European settlement, particularly its part in bringing into year-round proximity tribes which normally had little contact, had ended the festival forever.

From March to November, during the winter, the Ngunawal dispersed into small nomadic groups, living on game and those vegetable foods which were available year-round. At certain times of the year, 'manna' a whitish sugary deposit formed by insects, could be obtained from various trees, most notably the 'Manna Gum' (E. viminalis). In good seasons, up to nine kilograms of this important food could be obtained from a single tree. The Ngunawal kept warm during the cold upland winters by sewing possum skins together to make cloaks.

Dr Diane Bell suggested in 1975 that 500 would have been the approximate figure for the extent of the Ngunawal tribe; this would have allowed them to spread out into fairly widely dispersed groups. By 1856, their numbers were down to 70, according to Shumack, a local farmer. Their economy shattered, the survivors became dependent on whites for food, clothing and shelter. Some achieved a degree of prominence in white society. Johnny Taylor, a batsman of legendary prowess, was only one of a number of Ngunawal cricketers of the 1870s. 'Queen Nellie', the last full-blood Ngunawal, was a well known Queanbeyan identity, whose intelligence impressed the many judicial figures she appeared before. In her later years, her status became that of a local dignitary. She died on New Year's Day, 1897 in Queanbeyan Hospital after having received and farewelled all the notables of the town.

Aboriginal Art

That there are very few known Aboriginal sites on the southern tablelands is largely due to the absence of sandstone rock shelters. The limestone caves in the area, such as those at Wombeyan and Bungonia, are either too wet or shaft-like to be habitable. Of more than 100 caves inspected by Josephine Flood (1980), only one showed any evidence of Aboriginal occupation.
There are two Aboriginal sites which have been studied in detail in the area covered by this guide. One, at Nardoo, east of Lake George, is an open air camp site, and the other, at Gardiner's Rocks near Bigga, is the only known example of Aboriginal rock art on the southern tablelands. The paintings, which are fading and have been defaced, show that emus were once common in the area.
The few other known sites, such as the initiation mound near Kenmore Hospital on the eastern side of the Wollondilly River, the two corroboree grounds east of the Goulburn railway station, the burial grounds on Lansdowne Estate, and the weapon sharpening site near Tarago, have not as yet been excavated or examined by archeologists.

European Settlement

The honour of discovering the Goulburn district is usually given to Surveyor James Meehan who, accompanied by the explorer Hamilton Hume, reached what he called 'Lake Bathurst and Goulburn Downs' in 1818. John Oxley and Governor Macquarie, on separate expeditions, both passed close to the site of Goulburn in October, 1820, Macquarie noting of the Goulburn Plains that it was 'a most beautiful rich tract of country extending from Breadalbane Plains on the north to fine open forest on the south... fit for both purposes of cultivation and grazing, with a plentiful supply of fresh water ponds, and hardly a tree to be seen in this whole extent of plain, but with plenty of good timber on the hills and ridges which gird these plains like a belt.' Macquarie named the area 'Argyle', in honour of his native Scotland; for many years, the Goulburn electorate for the State legislative assembly was "known as Argyle.
Macquarie also ratified Meehan's naming of the town site as Goulburn, after Henry Goulburn, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and an important figure in Australia's early development. Despite this, Goulburn in its earliest days was known as 'Strathallen', after Andrew Allen's grant of land at Kenmore. In 1828, Alexander Macleay, the olonial Secretary, suggested that the name be changed to 'Lorn' but mercifully perhaps, the proposal lapsed.
The land around Goulburn was taken up rapidly in the 1820s. Quite a few stations, including Lansdowne, Springfield and Tirranna were settled before the township of Goulburn was laid out. But in these early years, it was not Goulburn, but Bungonia, 30 kilometres to the southeast, which was the principal town in the area. Bungonia owed its importance to the fact that it lay on the route of the first 'south road' from Sydney. Bungonia's preeminence was short-lived, however, and with the opening up of Yass and districts further south and west, the line of road was resurveyed by Thomas Mitchell in the 1830s. As a result, Bungonia was bypassed and Goulburn became the regional centre and a major town on the long road south.
Goulburn's first settlement plan was drawn up by Assistant Surveyor R. Dixon, in 1828. Dixon's allotments were situated in a bend on the Wollondilly River, near the present-day Tully Park. This area was expanded by Assistant Surveyor Elliott in 1829. But Sir Richard Bourke, Governor from 1832, did not care for the site, and ordered a new one to be created to the southwest. This site, laid out by Hoddle, became the modern 'heart' of Goulburn: this is the area bounded by Sloane, Clinton, Bourke and Goldsmith Streets, which contains many of the city's most important and historic buildings. But the original plan to the north persisted, and is the reason for the 'break' in the alignment of Goulburn's streets so evident on any map. Hoddle also laid out a number of allotments for the resettlement of soldiers discharged from the NSW Royal Veterans Company.
Charles MacAlister tells us in his Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South (1907) that 'Goulburn in the early forties was simply a little bark-roofed frontier town, a tablelands outpost'. It was also a garrison town, with very few women, and a rough atmosphere. 'Goulburn', he continued, 'had grown to be, if not the "loveliest", at all events one of the liveliest "villages of the plain" The population grew steadily. MacAlister estimated that Goulburn had 1200 inhabitants in 1848, the number being added to 'almost weekly' by 'new comers ... and liberated ticket-of-leave men.'
The Argyle district quickly became productive, in the earliest days as grazing, then as agricultural land. It was only in the 1860s, with the opening up of the western wheat belt, that pastoral industries again became'predominant. In the drought of 1838-40, it was Goulburn which kept the city of Sydney from near starvation.

Auburn Street 1880

The three storied Building on the right is now the Commonwealth Bank

Transport between Sydney and Goulburn

The land was productive, but transport between Sydney and the growing town was an enormous problem. Bullock drays were the 'heavy' transport of the time, but the condition of the so-called 'Great South Road' was so bad that drays and coaches spent days and sometimes weeks bogged, axle deep, in mud. In 1838, coaches of the firm of Doyle and Levy took sixteen days to inch their way from Campbelltown to Goulburn. By the 1850s, when Cobb and Co. coaches first appeared on the route, times were a good deal faster, but the journey, particularly through the notorious 'Bargo Brush' yeas not popular and was undertaken only out of necessity.
The Great South Road was built by convicts, working in iron-gangs and guarded by soldiers. The prisoners slept in barracks or 'stockades', such as the notorious Towrang Stockade, northeast of Goulburn. The atmosphere at the time was brutal; gallows were erected in Goulburn as early as 1832, and floggings were commonplace. There was a lock-up from 1830, and Goulburn's original courthouse, built in 1849, is still standing today. Its successor, the beautiful Italianate building adjoining Belmore Park, reflects the civic pride which transcended the grimmer architecture of the convict era. Old Goulburn Gaol actually the town's third was on this site, and until screens were erected, passers-by occasionally met with the grisly spectacle of public executions.
Many of the labourers and servants employed on the early landholdings were assigned convicts, or partly emancipated convicts known as 'ticket of leave' men. During the goldrushes of the 1850s, when almost every able-bodied man left for the diggings, the colony's chronic labour shortage became acute. Small, makeshift towns mushroomed on the diggings. The alluvial gold of the Abercrombie River, north of Goulburn, drew thousands of diggers, who ranged over the river and its tributaries in search of wealth. The Abercrombie rush was short-lived, although the influx of population helped to bring about the development of many small towns. Tuena, on the goldfields, Grabben Gullen, Binda, Bigga, Laggan and, somewhat later, CrookwelL covered the area northwest of Goulburn with a network of settlements. Pioneering life was both hard and hazardous. 'Farms and stations ran On human and animal musclepower, and the life of most people was one of unrelieved toil. There were natural hazards droughts, fires and floods -- and, as the district grew richer, man-made ones as well in the form of bushrangers. The first 'bushrangers' were, 'in fact, escaped convicts, men brutalised by the irongangs, who terrorised the first settlers. One such man, known as 'Whitton', was hanged in Old Goulburn Gaol in 1840, at the age of 26.
From the 1850s, gold, and the still precarious rule of law, brought an upsurge of robberies by gangs who disappeared into the bush, where they were able to elude the police. Some of these bushrangers, such as the lengendary Ben Hall became popular heroes, whose deeds were celebrated in folk songs. The Hall gang John Dunn, John Gilbert, John Vane, Mick Burke, John O'Meally, and Ben Hall operated over a large area of NSW, from Bathurst in the north east to Lake George in the south, holding up gold coaches and settlers 'alike. Frank Gardiner also 'worked' the area and there were many other, lesser known names as well. Goulburn's 'roaring days' must have resembled those of the American wild west, at least if MacAlister's accounts of shootouts in bark huts and 'bail-ups' can be believed. The arrival of the railway from Sydney in 1869 connected Goulburn far more closely to the metropolis and signalled the end of the lawless days in the sunny south.

The Railway

This railway was of enormous importance to Goulburn. Not only did it connect the city to markets in Sydney, but it provided a durable source of employment in the town. Before the advent of motorised transport, the construction of railways was regarded by rural communities as a panacea for development problems. After years of pressure, a rail-link was opened between Goulburn and Crookwell in 1902. And as late as 1926, a branch line was opened to Taralga, although its period of acti.ve service lasted only until the early 1950s. The main southern line reached Albury from Goulburn in 1881, and the branch line to Cooma and Tarago and Lake Bathurst was constructed in the 1880s.

After farming and grazing, mining is the most significant primary industry

After farming and grazing, mining is the most significant primary industry. Gold was found in the early 1850s along the Abercrombie River, at Tuena and along the creeks of the Shoalhaven, although the rush was short-lived. Today, Abercrombie gold draws only weekend prospectors. Near Mt Werong, the Ruby Creek silver-lead-zinc mine has been worked intermittently since its discovery around 1899. South of Goulburn, at Woodlawn, an ore body containing predominantly silver, lead and zinc has been mined by open cut methods since 1978. Sapphires have been taken from the Wollondilly River gravels, and the upper Shoalhaven has supported a number of lead mines, now long disused. One of the major geological resources of the area is limestone, most notably quarried at Marulan South. Limestone is vital in the manufacture of cement, and its metamorphosed form, marble, is still greatly in demand as a decorative facing stone. It is an unfortunate circumstance for the environment that so much of New South Wales' resource wealth limestone, coal beach sands lies in areas of great scenic beauty. The conflicting demands of conservation and industrial development permit no easy solution.