Map - Burrawang, New South Wales (Burrawang)

Burrawang (Burrawang)
Burrawang is a village in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia in Wingecarribee Shire.

It is situated high on a hill, 760m above sea level, midway between two reservoirs, the Wingecarribee and the Fitzroy.

At the time of white settlement in New South Wales, the Wadi Wadi tribe of Aborigines occupied the Burrawang (Yarrawa) area. The British naval surgeon Charles Throsby (1777–1828), became a settler in the colony in 1802 at the age of 31 and from 1804 served in the colonial medical establishment in the Newcastle area until 1809. He, along with his 58-year-old assistant Joseph Wild were mapping what is now known as the Moss Vale and Sutton Forest area and were commissioned to find an overland route from there to Jervis Bay as well as to plan and oversee the construction of a road to Goulburn Plains.

Throsby became the first landowner in what is now the Southern Highlands area in 1819 developing a cattle station which is now a museum open for public inspection called Throsby Park just off the Illawarra Highway in Moss Vale. This extremely capable pioneer became a member of the Legislative Council in 1825.

Surveyor Robert Hoddle and a gang of convicts cut a bridle path down the escarpment in 1830 as part of a track joining Cowpastures (Camden) to Kiama and Gerringong.

Sometime during this era the natural attributes of the Yarrawa Brush region came to their attention with its exotic rain forest and rich volcanic soil. This later became public knowledge and in 1859 the first land grant was issued in what is now the pretty hamlet of Wildes Meadow (a derivative of the name Wild’s meadow).

In 1865 the first post office was established at Burrawang, which was named after the native palm once plentiful in the area. Shortly thereafter came the first school, originally an Anglican establishment, which in 1876 was replaced by the first public school at the ‘Old School House’ (now a private residence).

In what is now Church Street the three churches were established around this time; Catholic 1875, Anglican 1886 and Presbyterian in 1888 (now a residential dwelling).

Major industries at the time included dairying, potatoes and vegetable growing, plus flour and timber milling. Burrawang also had a newspaper; the Burrawang Herald and the hall boasted an active social calendar including an annual ball.

Burrawang remained the major development in the Yarrawa Brush for some years but Robertson took over sometime in the late 1880s with the advent of a more direct road to Moss Vale the neighbouring development of Robertson started to overtake as the key settlement in the region. Once Macquarie Pass was opened in 1898, Burrawang became somewhat isolated. 
Map - Burrawang (Burrawang)
Country - Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of 7617930 km2, Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world. Australia's written history commenced with the European maritime exploration of Australia. The Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon was the first known European to reach Australia, in 1606. In 1770, the British explorer James Cook mapped and claimed the east coast of Australia for Great Britain, and the First Fleet of British ships arrived at Sydney in 1788 to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. The European population grew in subsequent decades, and by the end of the 1850s gold rush, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and an additional five self-governing British colonies established. Democratic parliaments were gradually established through the 19th century, culminating with a vote for the federation of the six colonies and foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system and wealthy market economy.
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AUD Australian dollar $ 2
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EN English language
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