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Armidale is a city in the Northern Tablelands, New South Wales, Australia. Armidale had a population of 24,504 as at June 2018. It is the administrative centre for the Northern Tablelands region. It is approximately halfway between Sydney and Brisbane at the junction of the New England Highway and Waterfall Way. The traditional owners of the land of Armidale are the Anaiwan Peoples. [edit] History
Before the British colonial settlement of New South Wales, the indigenous Anaiwan tribe occupied the area that encompasses current day Armidale. British pastoralists first entered the region in the early 1830s, following the earlier exploration of the area by John Oxley. Oxley recommended the region for grazing, and soon squatters established large leaseholds in the locality. Armidale was initially founded in 1839 by George James MacDonald who was the Commissioner of Crown Lands and head of the local Border Police detachment in the New England district. MacDonald established his barracks on the site and named it after Armadale on the Isle of Skye in Scotland which was the ancestral home of the MacDonald clan. The James Barnet-designed heritage-listed Armidale Post Office opened on 1 April 1843. The town, which was surveyed in 1848 and gazetted in 1849, was established to provide a market and administration for the farms, but soon after gold was discovered at nearby Rocky River and Gara Gorges, and a gold rush ensued, enlarging the town rapidly in the 1850s. The gold mining settlement of Hillgrove about 40 km east of Armidale was supplied by electricity from Australia's first hydro-electric scheme, the Gara River Hydro-Electric Scheme, remains of which are still visible on the Gara River below the Blue Hole at Castle Doyle. The nearby town of Uralla holds the grave of the famous Captain Thunderbolt – outlaw Fred Ward – who caused trouble in the area in the 1860s. As with Ned Kelly, the locals have adopted him as a larrikin hero and make the most of him as a tourist attraction. Armidale became a municipality in 1863 and was proclaimed a city in 1885. Although it does not lie between the two major cities of Sydney and Melbourne, a site just to the south of Armidale was, in the early 1900s, considered as a potential site for Australia's federal capital. Some saw its northerly location as better suited to all three eastern mainland states, including Queensland. Later, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, Armidale was one of the centres of separatist agitation by the New England New State Movement. Local politician, David Drummond, a strong support of the movement, successfully lobbied for Armidale to have the second teachers' college in New South Wales, and later a university, positioning the town as a potential state capital. [edit] Research Tips
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