Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names and images of people who have died.
Dubbo sits on the Macquarie River, the Wambuul, out on the edge of the western plains, about 400 kilometres from Sydney by road. It's Wiradjuri country. Europeans first came through with John Oxley in 1818, a squatter named Robert Dulhunty took up a run there in the early 1830s, and by 1849 a little bush settlement with a lock-up, a store and an inn had been gazetted as a village. From there it grew into a municipality in 1872, got the railway in 1881, became a city in 1966 and now draws people from all over to its gaol, its old slab homestead and its big open-range zoo. Below is my original post, followed by the longer story.
The History Of Dubbo - New South Wales
Dubbo - New South Wales
Dubbo is a city located in the Orana region of New South Wales, Australia.
1. Indigenous History: The Dubbo region has a long history of human occupation by the Wiradjuri people, who are the traditional custodians of the land. They have lived in the area for thousands of years and have a rich cultural heritage.
2. European Settlement: European exploration of the Dubbo area began in the early 19th century. In 1818, John Oxley, an explorer and surveyor, visited the area. The river nearby had already been named the Macquarie River after Governor Lachlan Macquarie by George Evans in 1812-13.
3. Establishment of Dubbo: Dubbo was gazetted as a village in November 1849. Storekeeper Jean Emile Serisier had organised a petition in 1848 for a sale of town allotments, and surveyor G. Boyle White's plan for the township on the banks of the Macquarie River was presented to the Surveyor General in May 1849. The name Dubbo comes from the Wiradjuri language (Dhubu, thought to come from the word thubbo).
4. Growth and Development: Dubbo grew steadily, benefiting from its strategic location as a crossing point on the Macquarie River and along major stock routes. It served as an important center for pastoralists, gold miners, and those seeking new opportunities in the expanding western regions of New South Wales.
5. Infrastructure and Services: Over time, Dubbo developed essential infrastructure and services. On 1 February 1881, the railway line reached the town, connecting it to Sydney and facilitating transportation of goods and people. The town also established educational institutions, hospitals, and other amenities.
6. Economic Activities: The local economy of Dubbo has been predominantly based on agriculture, particularly sheep and cattle farming. The region is known for its agricultural productivity, including wheat, wool, cotton, and other crops.
7. Cultural Heritage: The Wiradjuri people have a significant presence in Dubbo, and their cultural heritage is celebrated and respected.
8. Tourism: Dubbo has become a popular tourist destination, attracting visitors with its attractions such as the Taronga Western Plains Zoo, the Old Dubbo Gaol (a former prison turned museum), and various outdoor recreational activities.
Today, Dubbo is a thriving regional center, serving as a hub for commerce, education, health services, and tourism. It continues to grow and evolve while preserving its historical and cultural significance.
The Longer Story of Dubbo
Wiradjuri Country and the Name "Dubbo"
Long before any surveyor turned up, this was Wiradjuri land. Wikipedia's Dubbo article says evidence of Wiradjuri habitation goes back more than 40,000 years. The Wiradjuri are one of the biggest Aboriginal nations in New South Wales, and the river through town carries its Wiradjuri name, Wambuul, alongside the English one.
Nobody is completely sure what "Dubbo" means, and it's worth being honest about that. The Wiradjuri spelling is given as Dhubu. The usual view is that "Dubbo" is a mispronunciation of a Wiradjuri word, thubbo. Because Dulhunty didn't leave precise records, and today's knowledge of the language is incomplete, there's more than one story. Some say the word meant "red soil", which fits the red earth around town. Others say thubbo or tubbo meant "head covering". A third version says Dubbo was the name of an old Wiradjuri man who was living at the spot when Dulhunty took up the land.
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Oxley Comes Down the Macquarie, 1818
The river had already been named by the time Oxley got there. George Evans, the deputy surveyor, came across its upper reaches near Bathurst in 1812–13 and named it after Governor Lachlan Macquarie. In 1817 and 1818 John Oxley was sent off to trace the Lachlan and then the Macquarie, and he's recorded as the first European to report on the country that's now Dubbo, in 1818.
Oxley's journal, published in 1820, describes the river below Wellington with "rich flats on either side", long reaches "literally covered with water-fowl", and a current you could barely see. He followed it down until it spread out into an "ocean of reeds" in what we now call the Macquarie Marshes. That convinced him he was close to an inland sea. He was wrong about the sea, but his reports of good grazing country were what brought the squatters.
Robert Dulhunty and Dubbo Station
Robert Venour Dulhunty was born in Paignton, Devon, in 1803 and arrived in Sydney as a free settler on the Guildford on 5 March 1824, with his brother Lawrence. He got a 2,000-acre grant at Cullen Bullen and later lived mostly at Claremont in the Mulgoa Valley near Penrith.
Sometime between 1829 and 1833 he set out from Penrith with about 40 Aboriginal people in his party, crossed the mountains and followed the Macquarie down to Dubbo. When surveyor Robert Dixon passed through in 1833 to survey the Bogan, he noted he'd borrowed a dray from Dulhunty, so it's believed Dulhunty took up the land in about 1832. He liked using Aboriginal names for his properties, and "Dubbo" was one of them. After the Squatting Act of 1836 he took out a licence for Dubbo Station, in 1837.
By 1839 he had 28 free men and 18 assigned convicts working at Dubbo. His Wikipedia biography says he had a name as a fair boss who seldom had his convicts flogged. He hit his peak around 1839–40 with half a dozen big runs, then the depression of the early 1840s cost him dearly. He moved his family permanently to Dubbo in 1847 and died on 30 December 1853.
A Lock-up, a Store and an Inn: The 1849 Village
By 1846 there were enough settlers about that the government decided Dubbo needed a courthouse, police station and lock-up. A constable's residence went up in 1847, and a wooden slab courthouse and lock-up were finished early in 1848. That was the whole of Dubbo then, four buildings: the constable's house, the courthouse and lock-up, a store and an inn.
Nobody had title to their land, so in 1848 the storekeeper, Jean Emile Serisier, got a petition going asking for a sale of town allotments. Surveyor G. Boyle White sent a plan to the Surveyor General in May 1849, the place was gazetted as a village in November 1849, and the first land sales were held in 1850.
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Gold, Trade and the Roads North and South
Growth was slow at first. According to Wikipedia's Dubbo article, it was the gold rush trade of the 1860s, with traffic moving north and south through town, that really got things going. The first bank opened in 1867. By 1872 there were 850 people, and Dubbo was proclaimed a municipality that year.
Dubbo became a law-and-order centre for a huge stretch of the west. The heritage listing for the gaol makes the point that it was a regional centre for the courts before it became a place for commerce and settlement. The courthouse that stands today was built in 1887, and Kgbo's photo of the gate shows the date 1888.
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Old Dubbo Gaol
The gaol in Macquarie Street grew up on the site of the town's very first courthouse. The NSW State Heritage Register record, summarised on Wikipedia, gives a long list of building dates. A new stone lock-up in 1871 was the start of the gaol proper. A hospital, kitchen block, perimeter wall and watchtowers followed between 1877 and 1880, and big alterations, including the women's cells, came in 1886–87. It's believed to have been officially opened as a gaol in 1887. Inside the walls are 12 ordinary cells plus solitary cells, a padded cell and a condemned cell, and the gallows have been re-erected.
The gaol closed in 1966. The state government planned to knock it down for an office block, but Dubbo City Council and the local historical society fought it. In 1973 it was handed to the council, and it opened as a tourist attraction in 1974. It was added to the State Heritage Register on 26 March 2004.
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Jacky Underwood and the Breelong Murders
The best-known name tied to the gaol is Jack (Jacky) Underwood. On the night of 20 July 1900, Jimmy Governor, his brother Joe and Underwood attacked the Mawbey family's homestead at Breelong near Gilgandra, killing members of the family and the schoolteacher Ellen Kerz. Underwood split from the Governor brothers and was caught on 24 July at William Shaw's selection near Leadville, where he'd called in claiming to be "Charlie Brown".
He was tried at Dubbo on 2 October 1900 before Judge G. B. Simpson for the murder of Percy Mawbey. The jury found him guilty, though it told the court it couldn't decide who had struck the fatal blows. He was sentenced to death, waited months in the cell at Dubbo Gaol, and was hanged there on 14 January 1901. Jimmy Governor was caught near Wingham, tried in Sydney and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol in January 1901. Joe Governor was shot dead north of Singleton. I've told the full story in my Jimmy Governor and Gilgandra page.
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The Railway Arrives, 1881
The Main Western line was extended from Wellington and formally opened to Dubbo on 1 February 1881. Most of the stone station buildings went up between 1879 and 1881 under John Whitton, the railways' Engineer-in-Chief. The station building is a stone "first class" type with a refreshment room, and a stone station master's house in Talbragar Street was finished the same year.
Dubbo became a proper railway town, with a junction for the Main Western, Molong–Dubbo and Coonamble lines and a big loco depot. It was as far west as the heavy 36, 38 and 60 class engines went; smaller locos took over beyond. The last piece of the Molong to Dubbo line opened in May 1925, and that line was decommissioned in 1988. Trains from Sydney still finish at Dubbo, with coaches carrying on to Bourke, Broken Hill, Lightning Ridge and other towns.
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Dundullimal Homestead
About 7 kilometres south of town on Obley Road, just past the zoo, is Dundullimal, built by John Maughan on his sheep run beside the Macquarie. It's believed to be the oldest surviving slab hut house in Australia. The National Trust owns it, and it went on the State Heritage Register on 1 March 2002. The run sat in the old Wellington Squatting District, beyond Governor Darling's "limits of location", where squatters took up land under the 1836 licences.
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The River and Its Floods
The Macquarie has always been both Dubbo's reason for being and its biggest worry. Oxley noticed it in 1818, writing about "the vast body of water which this river must contain in times of flood". The river's recorded flood history includes serious flooding in 1955 and heavy flooding of low-lying land along the river in 1979. In November and December 2010 there was major flooding on the lower Macquarie. Burrendong Dam near Wellington now holds back the river for flood control and irrigation.
Dubbo in the Second World War
When war came, the RAAF wanted its supply depots well inland, out of reach of carrier-borne aircraft. Sites across inland NSW were surveyed in February 1942, and in April Dubbo was chosen. The RAAF Stores Depot in Cobra Street was built between 1940 and 1943. It was one of ten RAAF stores depots in Australia and one of only two in NSW, and it carried on under various names until 1995. In the 1930s Depression that same ground had been "Bagtown", where families camped in makeshift tents. The land that later became the zoo was also an army camp during the war.
A City, 1966
Dubbo was officially proclaimed a city in 1966, the same year the gaol closed. The town's older streets still show its story: the Victorian courthouse, the Lands Office clad in timber and corrugated iron, the 1881 station, red-brick California bungalows and Victorian terraces around Darling Street.
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Western Plains Zoo, 1977
In the late 1960s plans were drawn up for a big plains zoo to go with Sydney's Taronga, a place where large grazing animals could breed and roam in the open. The old wartime army camp outside Dubbo was turned into a 300-hectare zoo of bush and irrigated grassland, and Western Plains Zoo opened on 28 February 1977. Its Wikipedia article says it opened with 35 different animals from six countries and was the first new zoo built in Australia in 60 years. There are no fences in sight, just hidden moats. Today it's Taronga Western Plains Zoo, known for its rhinos and breeding programs for endangered species. Its story ties back to Sydney's old Moore Park zoo and to Taronga, which I've written about separately.
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Dubbo Today
At the 2021 Census Dubbo had 43,516 people, the largest centre in the Orana region, and 15.6 per cent of residents were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. It sits where the Newell, Mitchell and Golden highways cross. It's the big shopping, hospital and freight town for much of the west, with a Charles Sturt University campus, a Royal Flying Doctor Service base at the airport, and Fletcher International Exports as its largest private employer.
Timeline
- 40,000+ years ago: Evidence of Wiradjuri habitation in the Dubbo area.
- 1812–13: George Evans reaches the upper Macquarie and names it after Governor Macquarie.
- 1818: John Oxley comes down the Macquarie and reports on the Dubbo country.
- c.1832: Robert Dulhunty takes up the land he calls "Dubbo" (some sources say 1828).
- 1837: Dulhunty takes out a licence for Dubbo Station.
- c.1840–42: John Maughan builds Dundullimal.
- 1847–48: Constable's residence, then a slab courthouse and lock-up, are built.
- 1848: Storekeeper J. E. Serisier petitions for a sale of town allotments.
- November 1849: Dubbo is gazetted as a village.
- 1850: First land sales.
- 30 December 1853: Robert Dulhunty dies.
- 1867: First bank opens.
- 1871: New stone lock-up built, the start of Dubbo Gaol.
- 1872: Dubbo proclaimed a municipality, population 850.
- 1 February 1881: The railway from Wellington formally opens.
- 1887: The present courthouse is built and the gaol is believed to have been officially opened.
- 2 October 1900: Jacky Underwood is tried at Dubbo.
- 14 January 1901: Underwood is hanged at Dubbo Gaol.
- May 1925: The Molong to Dubbo line is completed.
- April 1942: Dubbo is chosen for an RAAF stores depot.
- 1955: Serious flooding of the Macquarie.
- 1966: Dubbo becomes a city, and the gaol closes.
- 1974: Old Dubbo Gaol reopens as a tourist attraction.
- 28 February 1977: Western Plains Zoo opens.
- 1979: Heavy flooding along the river.
- 2002 and 2004: Dundullimal and the gaol are added to the State Heritage Register.
Where the Sources Disagree
- When Dulhunty arrived: Wikipedia's Dubbo article says Dubbo Station was "established in 1828" and occupied from the early 1830s. Wikipedia's Robert Dulhunty article puts his trek at sometime between 1829 and 1833, and says he probably took up the land in 1832.
- Dundullimal's date and builder: The Dubbo article says it was built "around 1840" by "John Maugham". The Dundullimal Homestead article, drawing on the heritage listing, says "c. 1842" by "John Maughan".
- The name "Dubbo": Sources give "red soil", "head covering", and the name of an old Wiradjuri man. None can be proved, because Dulhunty left no clear record.
- When the gaol began: The heritage record treats the 1871 stone lock-up as the start of Dubbo Gaol, but the gaol is "believed" to have been officially opened in 1887. The same record says it was built "from 1847 to 1945", counting the first lock-up and the last additions.
- Gold and growth: Wikipedia credits "the Victorian gold rush of the 1860s" for Dubbo's growth. The main Victorian rush began in the 1850s, so the 1860s trade may have had more to do with the New South Wales goldfields. I couldn't settle this from the sources I fetched.
My Earlier Posts
- Jimmy Governor and Gilgandra – The Breelong Murders and the Manhunt of 1900
- Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol – The Executions and Famous Prisoners
- Taronga Zoo – From Moore Park to Bradleys Head
- The Old Moore Park Zoo – Sydney's First Zoo at Billy Goat Swamp
- Names Of Railway Stations In New South Wales – Including Aboriginal Names & Meanings
- Federation – 1 January 1901
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Dubbo" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbo
- Wikipedia, "Old Dubbo Gaol" (based on the NSW State Heritage Register listing) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Dubbo_Gaol
- Wikipedia, "Dundullimal Homestead" (based on the NSW State Heritage Register listing) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dundullimal_Homestead
- Wikipedia, "Robert Dulhunty" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dulhunty
- Wikipedia, "Jimmy Governor" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Governor
- Wikipedia, "Dubbo railway station" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbo_railway_station
- Wikipedia, "Macquarie River" (including Oxley's 1820 journal extract and the flood list) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_River
- Wikipedia, "Dubbo RAAF Stores Depot" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbo_RAAF_Stores_Depot
- Wikipedia, "Taronga Western Plains Zoo" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taronga_Western_Plains_Zoo
- Wikipedia, "Wiradjuri" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiradjuri
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each picture.