Bidwell

Bidwell lies in the southeastern Australian country centred on Bombala, in the Monaro region of far southern New South Wales. The Ngarigu Aboriginal people inhabited the area before European settlement began in the 1830s. Captain Ronald Campbell established a large property named Bombalo in 1833.

The Bombala River supplied the axis for settlement, while the name Bombala derives from an Aboriginal expression meaning “meeting of the waters.” The district occupies the southeastern edge of the Monaro Tablelands at about 705 metres above sea level.

Its oceanic climate brings frequent frost and regular dustings of snow, and the land slopes eastward toward the warmer South Coast. Grazing and timber became principal local industries. Bidwell should be understood through this higher country and its approaches to the coast: a rural landscape of rivers, pastures, woodland and cold winters, linked historically to Ngarigu life and later to pastoral settlement.