Goulburn Tourism, NSW Australia

Caroline Chisholm Mosaic Goulburn Regional Art Gallery Wakefield Park Motor Racing Circuit Bungonia National Park

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.Goulburn lies on rolling plains, at the head of the Southern Tablelands as you descend from the Great Dividing Range through the Southern Highlands from Sydney.The plains and the Wollondilly River provided native game and fish for a number of the traditional aboriginal peoples (Mulwarrie, Tarlo, Burra Burra and Wollondilly) whose tribal lands seemed to have overlapped in this fertile area. Evidence remains of sites where stone tools were made and great corroborees were held - the last in the late 19th century.The aboriginal peoples and the Europeans seemed to have lived in some harmony after settlement, but great epidemics of disease largely wiped out the indigenous population in the 19th century, and sadly few of the original inhabitants remained by the turn of the 20th.The first white explorers (Lt. Hacking and the indomitable Price, Wilson and Collins) to see the future site of the great inland city reached Mt. Towrang in 1798, but it was not until the opening of the inland some 20 years later that the land was largely explored.