Goulburn ( ) is a regional city in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, approximately south-west of Sydney and north-east of Canberra. It was the first inland settlement in Australia to be proclaimed a city, through letters patent by Queen Victoria in 1863 (although Bathurst, established in 1815, is the oldest inland settlement in Australia). Goulburn had a population of as of the . Goulburn is the seat of Goulburn Mulwaree Council.
Goulburn is a railhead on the Main Southern line, and regional health and government services centre, supporting the surrounding pastoral industry as well as being a stopover for travellers on the Hume Highway. It has a central historic park and many historic and listed buildings. It is also home to the monument the Big Merino, a sculpture that is the world's largest concrete sheep.
History The Goulburn Plains were named by surveyor James Meehan after Henry Goulburn, Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies, during an excursion by Governor Lachlan Macquarie to the area in 1820. The Aboriginal name for the area is Mulwaree which means "long water".
The colonial British government gave large land grants to well-connected colonists such as Captain Lachlan Macalister, William Broughton and Hannibal Macarthur in the Goulburn area from about 1820. Smaller parcels of land were later sold to ordinary settlers within the Nineteen Counties, including Argyle County in which Goulburn was located. The process displaced the local Indigenous Mulwaree clan and the introduction of exotic livestock drove out a large part of the Aboriginal peoples' food supply.Goulburn Heritage Study (1981) cited in
Indigenous history The Mulwaree Plains are the traditional lands of the Mulwaree and Tarlo clans of the Gandangara people. These people were closely inter-related with the Burra Burra clan of Gandangara from the Taralga area and also the Gandangara clans residing north along the Wollondilly River.
It has been proposed that the Mulwaree were perhaps from the neighbouring Ngunnawal language group of people. However, early accounts show that the Ngunnawal would often come to the Goulburn region to fight with the Mulwaree clan of Gandangara before returning to their homelands around Yass and the upper reaches of the Lachlan River.
British colonisation One of the most influential first recorded colonists in the Goulburn area was Captain Lachlan Macalister who established the 'Strathaird' grazing property in 1825 (on the site of the present Police Academy) and was appointed magistrate of the region. The first buildings in Goulburn were a rough-hewn timber jail and courthouse with a simple barracks for troopers of the New South Wales Mounted Police. Under Macalister, the convict labourers of the early colonists were treated brutally with public floggings being frequently administered.
The town of Goulburn was originally surveyed in 1828, although moved to the present site of the city in 1833 when the surveyor Robert Hoddle laid it out.
Around 1833, Mat Healy established the first pub and built the first stone building. George Johnson purchased a town allotment 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. The 1841 census records Goulburn had a population of 655 people: 444 males and 211 females.Ransome T. Wyatt, (1972) The history of Goulburn, N.S.W., Sydney, Landsdowne Press, p.46. This number had jumped to 1,171 inhabitants by 1847, 686 males and 485 females.William Henry Wells (1848, facsimile edition 1972), A geographical dictionary or gazetteer of the Australian colonies 1848, Sydney, State Library of New South Wales, p.187. It had 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 Goulburn Football Club was established in 1872 and the following year took part in the earliest known rugby union match outside of Sydney when they played the Garroorigang School (a boarding and day school for boys located in Goulburn).
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. Rail First Asset Management (previously known as 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 .
Proclaimed a city
Goulburn holds the 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's Church as the Cathedral Church of the diocese. This was the last instance in which Letters Patent were used in this manner in the British Empire, as they had been significantly discredited for use in the colonies, and were soon to be declared formally invalid and unenforceable in this context. Several legal cases over the preceding decade in particular had already established that the monarch had no ecclesiastical jurisdiction in colonies possessing responsible government. This had been granted to NSW in 1856, seven years earlier. The Letters Patent held authority only over those who submitted to it voluntarily, and then only within the context of the Church—it had no legal civil authority or implications. An absolute and retrospective declaration to this effect was made in 1865 in the Colenso Case, by the Judiciary Committee of the Privy Council.
However, under the authority of the Crown Lands Act 1884 (48. Vict. No. 18), Goulburn was officially proclaimed a City on 20 March 1885 removing any lingering doubts as to its status. This often unrecognised controversy has in no way hindered the development of Goulburn as a regional centre, with an impressive court house (completed in 1887) and other public buildings, as a centre for wool selling, and as an industrial town.
Goulburn School Strike
In 1962, Goulburn was the focus of the fight for state aid to non-government schools. An education strike was called in response to a demand for installation of three extra toilets at a local Catholic primary school, St Brigid's. The local Catholic archdiocese closed down all local Catholic primary schools and sent the children to the government schools. The Catholic authorities declared that they had no money to install the extra toilets. Nearly 1,000 children turned up to be enrolled locally and the state schools were unable to accommodate them. The strike lasted only a week but generated national debate. In 1963 the prime minister, Robert Menzies, made state aid for science blocks part of his party's platform.J. Warhurst, Fifty years since the "Goulburn Strike": Catholics and education politics, Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 33 (2012) , 72–82.
Heritage listings
Goulburn has a number of heritage-listed sites, including:
165 Auburn Street: Goulburn Post Office 170 Bourke Street: St Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn 197 Braidwood Road: Railway Barracks Bungonia Road: Old Goulburn Brewery Bungonia Road: Lansdowne Park Clifford Street: Colonial Mutual Life Building 248 Main Road: Rossi Bridge over Wollondilly River Main Southern railway: Goulburn Viaduct Main Southern railway: Goulburn railway station off Maud Street: Goulburn Correctional Centre Maud Street: Riversdale 4 Montague Street: Goulburn Court House Sloane Street: Connollys Mill Sloane Street: Old Police Barracks, Goulburn Sloane Street: Goulburn Railway Workshops 244–248 Sloane Street: Alpine Lodge Motel 318 Sloane Street: St Clair Taralga Road: Kenmore Asylum 42 Verner Street: St Peter and Paul's Old Cathedral Wollondilly River: Goulburn Pumping Station
Demographics
According to the , there were people in Goulburn. Of these: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 5.3% of the population. 83.3% of people were born in Australia. The next most common countries of birth included England 1.9%, New Zealand 1.0%, India 0.9% and the Philippines 0.7%, and Nepal 0.6%. 85.6% of people spoke only English at home, the next most common languages spoken at home included Nepali 0.7%, Mandarin 0.6%, Malayalam 0.4%, Greek 0.3%, and Punjabi 0.3% The most common responses for religion were No Religion 30.6%, Catholic 25.3%, Anglican 20.8%, and Uniting Church 3.0%; a further 8.5% of respondents elected not to disclose their religion.
Geography Goulburn is located a small distance east of the peak ridge of the Great Dividing Range and is 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. The Wollondilly then flows north-east, into Lake Burragorang (Warragamba Dam) and eventually into the Tasman Sea via the Hawkesbury River. The city is located within the Southern Tablelands Temperate Grassland.
Climate Owing to its elevation, Goulburn has an oceanic climate (Cfb) with warm summers and cool to cold winters; with a high diurnal range. Its climate is variable much of the year, though generally dry with maximum temperatures ranging from in July to in January. Rainfall is distributed evenly throughout the year, with an annual average of . Snow occasionally falls, although rarely in significant quantities due to the rainshadow brought about by the hills to the west-northwest of Goulburn (around Crookwell). Temperature extremes have ranged from .
Governance
As a major settlement of southern New South Wales, Goulburn was the administrative centre for the region and was the location for important buildings of the district. The first lock-up in the town was built in 1830. In 1832 a postal service commenced in Goulburn, four years after the service was adopted in New South Wales. The first town plan had been drawn up by Assistant Surveyor Dixon in 1828, but the site was moved, as it was subject to flooding. The new town plan was drawn up by Surveyor Hoddle and was gazetted in 1833. Goulburn is the seat of the Goulburn Mulwaree Shire local government area (LGA) of New South Wales, Australia formed in 2004. The most recent elections for Council were held on 4 December 2021.
New South Wales Police Academy