Place:Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Dubbo (Template:IPAc-en) is a city in the Orana Region of New South Wales, Australia. It is the largest population centre in the Orana region, with a population of 43,516^[1] at June 2021.

The city is located at the intersection of the Newell, Mitchell, and Golden highways. The nearest city, Orange, is about Template:Convert away. Dubbo is located roughly Template:Convert above sea level, Template:Convert north-west of Sydney (Template:Convert by road) and is a major road and rail freight hub to other parts of New South Wales. It is linked by national highways north to Brisbane, south to Melbourne, east to Sydney and Newcastle, and west to Broken Hill and Adelaide.

Dubbo is included in the rainfall and weather forecast region for the Central West Slopes and in the Central West Slopes and Plains division of the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts.

History

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Evidence of habitation by Wiradjuri Nation, Indigenous Australians dates back over 40,000 years.Template:Citation needed

Explorer and surveyor John Oxley was the first European to report on the area, now known as Dubbo, in 1818.^[2] The first permanent British colonists in the area were English-born Robert Dulhunty and his brother Lawrence Dulhunty.

Dulhunty occupied a property, known as Dubbo Station (established in 1828), from the early 1830s on a squatting basis. With the passing of the Squatting Act in 1836, he took out a licence on the property.

Dulhunty showed an affinity with Indigenous Australians, his party included some 40 Aboriginals and he favoured using Aboriginal names for properties, including Dubbo. Dubbo is now thought to be a mispronunciation of the local Wiradjuri word thubbo, but because of a lack of precise records from Dulhunty at the time and an incomplete knowledge of the Wiradjuri language today, some conjecture remains over the word's meaning. Some references indicate that Dubbo was the name of an old Wiradjuri man who resided at the site when Dulhunty took the land. Dubbo's name apparently meant "red soil", consistent with the local landscape. Thubbo or tubbo possibly is Wiradjuri for "head covering".

Dundullimal Homestead is a farmhouse from that period, built around 1840 by John Maugham on his Template:Convert sheep station. The building is one of the oldest homesteads still standing in western NSW and today is open to visitors.

In 1846, due to the number of settlers in the area, the government decided to establish a courthouse, police station, and lock-up in the Dubbo area. A constable's residence was completed in 1847 and a wooden slab-construction courthouse and lock-up was completed in early 1848. By this time, the settlement had only four buildings - the constable's residence, courthouse and lock-up, a store, and an inn.

Due to the lack of title for the land, in 1848, storekeeper Jean Emile Serisier organised a petition asking for a land sale of town allotments. The plan was presented to the colony's surveyor general in May 1849 by surveyor G. Boyle White.^[3] The settlement was gazetted as a village in November 1849 with the first land sales taking place in 1850.^[2] Population growth was slow until the Victorian gold rush of the 1860s brought an increase in north–south trade. The first bank was opened in 1867. Steady population growth caused the town to be proclaimed a municipality in 1872, when its population was 850.^[2] The railway extension of the main western railway from Wellington to Dubbo was formally opened on 1 February 1881. By 1897, Dubbo had a general store, Carrier Arms, a slab courthouse, a gaol, and a police hut. The final section of the Molong to Dubbo railway opened in late May 1925. Dubbo was officially proclaimed a city in 1966.

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