Mudgee is a town in the Central West of

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

, Australia. It is in the broad fertile

Cudgegong River Cudgegong River, a perennial stream that is part of the Macquarie catchment within the Murray–Darling basin, is located in the central western and Orana districts of New South Wales, Australia. The river rises of the western slopes of the ...

valley north-west of Sydney and is the largest town in the

Mid-Western Regional Council The Mid-Western Regional Council is a local government area in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. The area is located adjacent to the Castlereagh Highway that passes through the middle of the area in an approximate southea ...

local government area as well as being the council seat. As at June 2021 its population was 12,563. Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. The district lies across the edge of the

geological structure Structural geology is the study of the three-dimensional distribution of rock units with respect to their deformational histories. The primary goal of structural geology is to use measurements of present-day rock geometries to uncover informati ...

known as the

Sydney Basin The Sydney Basin is an interim Australian bioregion and is both a structural entity and a depositional area, now preserved on the east coast of New South Wales, Australia and with some of its eastern side now subsided beneath the Tasman Sea. ...

History

Wiradjuri people

The Mudgee and Dabee clans of the

Wiradjuri The Wiradjuri people (; ) are a group of Aboriginal Australian people from central New South Wales, united by common descent through kinship and shared traditions. They survived as skilled hunter-fisher-gatherers, in family groups or clans, a ...

people lived at and around the site of what is now the town of Mudgee on the

. Some cultural and tool-making sites of these Aboriginal people remain, including the Hands on the Rocks, The Drip and Babyfoot Cave sites.

Significance of local names

Many place-names in the region are derived from the original

Wiradjuri language Wiradjuri (; many other spellings, see Wiradjuri) is a Pama–Nyungan language of the Wiradhuric subgroup. It is the traditional language of the Wiradjuri people of Australia. A progressive revival is underway, with the language being taug ...

, including Mudgee itself, which was named by the Wiradjuri clan who lived there. There are various translations as to what Mudgee means including "resting place", "contented", "nest in the hills" as well as "friend or mate" which the latter coincides with the Wiradjuri word "mudyi". The correct pronunciation has also been recorded as either ''Moudgee'', ''Moothi'' or ''Mougee''. Nearby places include

Lue Lue or LUE may refer to: People * Andrew Lue (born 1992), Canadian retired football player * Cachet Lue (born 1997), Canadian-born Jamaican footballer * Lue Gim Gong (1860–1925), Chinese-American horticulturalist * Lee Lue (1935–1969), Laot ...

(Loowee, 'a chain of waterholes');

Gulgong Gulgong is a 19th-century gold rush town in the Central Tablelands and the wider Central West regions of the Australian state of New South Wales. The town is situated within the Mid-Western Regional Council local government area. It is located ...

('a gully'); Wollar ('a rock water hole'); Menah ('flat country'); Eurunderee ('a local tree'); Guntawang ('a peaceful place'), Cooyal ('dry country'); Wilbertree ('a long switch'); Gooree ('native chasing live animal'); Burrendong ('darker than usual'). The Aboriginal name of the

Rylstone Rylstone is a village and civil parish in the Craven district of North Yorkshire, England. It is situated very near to Cracoe and about 6 miles south west of Grassington. The population of the civil parish as of the 2011 census was 160. Ryls ...

area was Combamolang.

Early British colonisation (1821 to 1850)

James Blackman, leading an small expedition in the latter half of 1821, was the first British colonist to enter the Mudgee district. Not long after, Lieutenant William Lawson who was then commandant of Bathurst, made several further expeditions to Mudgee. Both Blackman and Lawson found the site to be an Aboriginal settlement or ''bimmel'' inhabited by around 100 people who called the area ''Mudgee'' or ''Mujjee''. In February 1822, George and Henry Cox, sons of William Cox, followed the trails set up by Blackman and Lawson with 500 head of livestock, and established a grazing property at

Menah Menah is a locality in New South Wales, Australia. It is located about north-west of Mudgee Mudgee is a town in the Central West of New South Wales, Australia. It is in the broad fertile Cudgegong River valley north-west of Sydney an ...

, 3 kilometres north of the current town. The Coxes were soon in conflict with the Mudgee clan who drove away their workers and livestock. George Cox gathered some men at Bathurst and returned to Menah where a two hour fight later ensued, resulting in six Mudgee people being killed and one of Cox's employees being speared to death. The violence in the region worsened in June 1824, when Theophilus Chamberlain, who was the Coxes' superintendent of their Mudgee property holdings, led a number of punitive expeditions against the local Aboriginal people. A skirmish at Guntawang to the north of Mudgee resulted in some settlers being killed, with around 70 or more Aboriginal people dying in follow up raids.

Martial law Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory. Use Marti ...

was declared by Governor Thomas Brisbane in August 1824, leading to further killings of the Wiradjuri people in the Mudgee area. Descendants and workers of the Coxes later described this period as one where "an immense number of natives, men, women and children were slaughtered" and "the bodies of the blacks were piled together and burnt...like old tar barrels". The violence forced the Coxes to abandon Guntawang, and relieving Chamberlain of his duties, they shifted their enterprise to nearby Dabee. The Cox family remained prominent landholders around Mudgee for many decades, owning the Dabee, Menah and Burrundulla properties. William Lawson and his descendants also continued to be leading pastoralists in the region, holding estates such as

Putta Bucca Putta Bucca is a locality in New South Wales, Australia. It is located about north of Mudgee, on the Cudgegong River Cudgegong River, a perennial stream that is part of the Macquarie catchment within the Murray–Darling basin, is loca ...

and Havilah. The site of the Mudgee township was surveyed in 1837 and the first land sales occurred in August 1838. It has been incorrectly claimed that

Robert Hoddle Robert Hoddle (21 April 1794 – 24 October 1881) was a surveyor and artist. He is best known as the surveyor general of the Port Phillip District (later known as the Australian state of Victoria) from 1837 to 1853, especially for creation of ...

designed the village. Although Hoddle was the first surveyor in the region, marking out the boundaries of Putta Bucca and Bombira, by the time the village was gazetted, he had already left the district to become leader of the Port Phillip Survey. John Blackman built a slab hut, the first dwelling in Mudgee and its general store. By 1841 there were 36 dwellings, three hotels, a hospital, a post office, two stores and an Anglican church. St John's Church of England was consecrated on 6 May 1841. The police station moved from Menah in the mid-1840s and an Anglican school was established in that decade.

1850 to present

In 1851 the population of Mudgee was 200. This skyrocketed with the discovery of gold by

Edward Hargraves Edward Hammond Hargraves (7 October 1816 – 29 October 1891) was a gold prospector who claimed to have found gold in Australia in 1851, starting an Australian gold rush. Early life Edward Hammond Hargraves was born on 7 October 1816 in Gos ...

in nearby Hargraves, leading to a

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New Z ...

. While no gold was found in Mudgee itself, the town is central to the goldfields of

, Hill End and Windeyer, and grew rapidly as a result. Mudgee was declared as a municipality in 1860 making it the second oldest municipality west of the Great Dividing Range with a population of 1500 in 1861. A public school was built in the 1850s together with the present Anglican, Catholic Methodist and Presbyterian churches. A new police station, courthouse, Mechanics' Institute and a town hall were built in the 1860s. There were four coach factories operating in Mudgee to cater for the demand of the nearby goldfields. The

National Trust of Australia The National Trust of Australia, officially the Australian Council of National Trusts (ACNT), is the Australian national peak body for community-based, non-government non-profit organisations committed to promoting and conserving Australia's I ...

has a number of these buildings registered including the Mudgee Museum (formerly the Colonial Inn), the Catholic presbytery, the court house, the police station and the Anglican Church. On 1 June 1861 the

Electric Telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging system ...

system arrived and was opened for messages to be transmitted and received at the Telegraph office. One gold miner attracted to the Mudgee district was Niels Peter Larsen, who married Louisa Albury in Mudgee in 1866. They were the parents of leading Australian poet

Henry Lawson Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson (17 June 1867 – 2 September 1922) was an Australian writer and bush poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial perio ...

in Grenfell in 1867 and changed their names to Peter and

Louisa Lawson Louisa Lawson (née Albury) (17 February 1848 – 12 August 1920) was an Australian poet, writer, publisher, suffragist, and feminist. She was the mother of the poet and author Henry Lawson. Early life Louisa Albury was born on 17 February ...

. By the birth of their third child, they moved to a selection at Pipeclay (now Eurunderee) 8 km north of Mudgee. The site is now a rest stop with a plaque. Louisa Lawson's vigorous lobbying led to the establishment of the slab-and-bark Eurunderee Public School in 1876 with Henry Lawson first attending aged nine. He would later write about the school in his poem, ''The Old Bark School''. Lawson later attended St. Matthews Central School, Mudgee before progressively worsening deafness led to him leaving school at 14. He lived in the region until age 15 and many of his stories were written about the district. Tiny diamonds were sometimes found and discarded by gold panners when "washing off", but sometime before June 1869 a larger specimen was found on the banks of the

about from Mudgee and appraised by the jeweller George Crisp, of Queen Street, Melbourne, at 22.2 carat. Dubbed the "Mudgee diamond", it was the largest found to that date in Australia, however commercial quantities were not found and companies founded to exploit the discoveries were wound up a few years later. As the gold petered out in the latter half of the 19th century, Mudgee was sustained by both its wool industry and a nascent wine industry founded by a German immigrant, Adam Roth, in the 1850s. The opening of the railway extension from

to Mudgee occurred on 10 September 1884. The railway boosted the town's agriculture. The extension between Rylstone and Mudgee closed on 2 March 1992. This same section re-opened eight years later, on 2 September 2000 and closed again in 2007. The Wallaby Track Drive Tour visits various sites associated with Lawson including the old Eurundee Public School, the Henry Lawson memorial, the Budgee Budgee Inn, Sapling Gully, Golden Gully and the Albury Pub which was owned by Lawson's grandfather. In 1890 a local newspaper was founded with the title the ''Mudgee Guardian and North-Western Representative''. Its title changed in 1963 to the ''

Mudgee Guardian and Gulgong Advertiser The ''Mudgee Guardian and Gulgong Advertiser'' is an English language newspaper published in Mudgee, New South Wales, Australia. It was established in 1890 under the name ''Mudgee Guardian and North-Western Representative''. History The ''M ...

'' and is currently published twice a week. Mudgee's Glen Willow Regional Sports Stadium hosted the 2012

City vs Country Origin City vs Country Origin was an annual Australian rugby league football match that took place in New South Wales between City and Country representative sides. The City side represented the Sydney metropolitan area. While technically it was Sydney ...

rugby league match with an attendance of 8,621, and the 2017 match with an attendance of 8,322. The St. George Dragons regularly host home matches there. Additionally, in the

A-League A-League Men (known as the Isuzu UTE A-League for sponsorship reasons) is the highest-level professional men's soccer league in Australia and New Zealand. At the top of the Australian league system, it is the country's premier men's competit ...

, the

Western Sydney Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US * Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that i ...

based

Western Sydney Wanderers Western Sydney Wanderers Football Club (colloquially known as Western Sydney, or simply as Wanderers) is an Australian professional soccer club based in the Western Sydney region of Sydney, New South Wales. It competes in the country's premie ...

have chosen to take their Community Round match to Mudgee's Glen Willow Regional Sports Stadium, as part of their new Regional Strategy, In 2014, the local council found itself involved in a statewide

corruption Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption m ...

investigation when officers of the

Independent Commission Against Corruption (New South Wales) The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is an agency of the Government of New South Wales responsible for eliminating and investigating corrupt activities and enhancing the integrity of the state's public administration. The Comm ...

raided the local council's offices.

Economy

Mudgee has developed as a

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are ...

producing region, it has manufacturing and repair industries. It is also heavily dependent on several major mines in the surrounding area and fly-in fly-out (FIFO) miners who live in the town but work elsewhere. Other rural produce includes

cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus '' Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ...

sheep Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus ''Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated sh ...

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeolog ...

, alfalfa,

olive The olive, botanical name ''Olea europaea'', meaning 'European olive' in Latin, is a species of small tree or shrub in the family Oleaceae, found traditionally in the Mediterranean Basin. When in shrub form, it is known as ''Olea europaea'' ...

s, fruit,

tomato The tomato is the edible berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to the Spanish word , ...

es, sweetcorn,

honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...

, alpacas and

dairy product Dairy products or milk products, also known as lacticinia, are food products made from (or containing) milk. The most common dairy animals are cow, water buffalo, nanny goat, and ewe. Dairy products include common grocery store food items in ...

s. These, however, do not play as large a role as mining. The Ulan coal mines are in the district and it also produces

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorpho ...

, pottery clays,

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especia ...

and dolomite. These mines have further potential to expand in the region, however they attract environmental protests. Tourism is also a growing industry based mostly on the wineries and, as of 2020, escaping the restrictive life in Sydney. Property prices have surged due to the local airport and the fact that it's only a one hour flight to Sydney. A laboratory was established in 1987 to test meat for pesticide residues. Local real estate, petrol and living costs skyrocketed since 2010 when the

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

boom began to peak. This has rolled onto the local population, who have since had increased difficulty in living in the town. A new hospital was completed in 2020.

Climate

Mudgee has a humid subtropical climate (''Cfa''), with

semi-arid A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi- ...

(''Bsk'') characteristics. Summers are hot with the occasional

thunderstorm A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are somet ...

. Winters are relatively cold, with frosty mornings and sunny days, interspersed with periods of heavy rain and, rarely,

snowfall Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout ...

; Mudgee's heaviest snowfall on record was on 5 July 1900. Rainfall is moderate and falls fairly evenly all year round, with a slight peak in summer. Extreme temperatures have ranged from 43.9 °C (111.02 °F) to –8.3 °C (17.1 °F). The highest monthly rainfall ever recorded was 303.2 mm (11.9 in) of rain in March 1926. Mudgee gets 113.0 clear days, annually.

Heritage buildings

Mudgee has a number of heritage-listed sites, including: *5-7 Church Street: Regent Theatre * 13 Church Street: St Mary's Roman Catholic Church * 64 Market Street: Mudgee Town Hall * 80 Market Street: Mudgee Post Office * 111 Lester's Lane: Binnawee Homestead * Wallerawang-Gwabegar railway: Mudgee railway station

Churches

* St John's Anglican Church * St Mary's Catholic Church * St Paul's Presbyterian Church * Mudgee Uniting Church * Frontline Assemblies of God * Mudgee Baptist Church * Salvation Army * Seventh Day Adventist Church

Schools and colleges

* Cudgegong Valley Public School *

Mudgee High School , motto_translation = Not for Yourself but for the School , image = Main Quad.jpg , image_size = 250px , caption = Main Quad on a wet afternoon, pictured in 2014 , location = 41 ...

* Mudgee Public School * St Matthews Catholic School * Mudgee College (TAFE)

Gallery

Image:AMudgeeShot0003.jpg, Commercial building in town Image:Mudgee Pub 2009.jpg, Lawson Park Hotel Image:AMudgeeChurch1.JPG, Presbyterian Church at night Image:AMudgeeShot0008.jpg, Cudgegong River where it passes close to the town

Notable people

Natarsha Belling Natarsha Belling (born 29 May 1970) is an Australian journalist. Belling has previously worked at Network 10 as a television presenter, news presenter and reporter. She spent over two decades with the company until being made redundant in Augu ...

– national newsreader for Channel 10 *

Felicity Brown Felicity Brown is an English-born artist and designer. She lives and works in London in the United Kingdom. Her website iwww.felicitybrown.co.uk She studied Fine Art and Printed Textiles at the Glasgow School of Art, receiving a first class hono ...

– milliner *

Kathleen Mary Burrow Kathleen Mary Burrow (1899 - 1987) was an Australian physiotherapist, businesswoman and Catholic lay leader. She and her sister Anne founded the Graham-Burrow School of Physical Education in 1926. They organized courses in dance, physical educa ...

- physiotherapist, businesswoman and Catholic lay leader * Kim Currie – Chef and owner of hatted Zin House restaurant, Winner of NSW Rural Woman of the Year 2009 * Ivan Dougherty, Australian army officer, who attended

in his youth * Jamie Fitzgerald – former professional

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...

footballer who played 71 First Grade NRL games *

Darrell Hair Darrell Bruce Hair (born 30 September 1952) is an Australian former Test match cricket umpire, from New South Wales. He stood on the International panel of umpires from 2002 to 2003, before he, along with fellow Australian Simon Taufel, and N ...

– international cricket umpire *

Lisa Keightley Lisa Maree Keightley (born 26 August 1971) is an Australian former cricketer and current cricket coach. She played primarily as a right-handed batter. She appeared in nine Test matches, 82 One Day Internationals and one Twenty20 International ...

– cricketer, first woman to score a century at Lord's in England *

– one of Australia's most recognised poets and short story writers. Lived in Mudgee for 16 years during childhood after his birth in Grenfell. *

– mother of Henry Lawson and prolific activist * David Lowe – Winemaker and owner Lowe Wines, President NSW Wine Industry Association, Vice President Australian Winemakers Federation * The Massey family of organists — born in the town and returned frequently * Scott McGregor – Australian actor, TV presenter and railway historian * Ted Noffs – Methodist minister and founder of the

Wayside Chapel The Wayside Chapel is a charity and parish mission of the Uniting Church in Australia in the Potts Point area of Sydney, Australia. Situated near Sydney's most prominent red-light district in Kings Cross, the Wayside Chapel offers programs and ...

in Kings Cross 1964 * James Stanton - Olympic water polo player for Australia. * Ken Sutcliffe – television personality, sports reader for Channel Nine * Dennis Talbot – professional boxer who represented Australia in the 1972 Olympics in Munich *

Gil Wahlquist Gil Wahlquist (1927–2012) was an Australian journalist and "pioneer organic wine producer"Huon HookePioneer organic wine producer has died at 85 therealreview.com. Retrieved 11 April 2022. who was largely responsible for re-establishing the ...

- pioneer organic winemaker and owner of Botobolar Vineyard ;Groups * Brothers3 – ''X-Factor'' contestants, 2014

References

External links

* * * * {{authority control Towns in New South Wales Towns in the Central West (New South Wales) Central Tablelands *