Berrima

Postcode: 2577

Berrima is a village in the Southern Highlands district on the old Hume Highway between Canberra and Sydney and is now popular with visitors from both cities, especially on weekends. It was previously known officially as Town of Berrima.

The name Berrima is believed to derive from an Aboriginal word meaning either ‘southward’ or ‘black swan’. The area around Berrima was once occupied by the Dharawal Aborigines. They had, in effect, been driven off or killed by the 1870s.

The Wingecarribee River and the area was first visited during the late 1790s, including a 1798 expedition led by an ex-convict, John Wilson. However, John and Hamilton Hume rediscovered the area in 1814. The area was explored by Charles Throsby in 1818. Runs were taken up soon after, including by one by Charles Throsby. Harper’s Mansion, which is on a hill overlooking the town, was built from 1829 – 1830. Bong Bong had been planned as a major town for the County, but as it was flood prone, the New South Wales Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell chose Berrima town site on the road running south from Sydney to Goulburn with the intention that the town be the chief centre for southern New South Wales. The survey was conducted in 1830 and the town plan was approved in 1831. As well as being an administrative centre, there were ambitions that the town might become a commercial and manufacturing centre, “where the wool of Argyle and Camden might be made into cloth and the hide into leather”.

The court house was built between 1833 and 38. The gaol was built from 1835 by convict labour and opened in 1839. The Surveyor-General Inn was built in 1835. It has been continuously licensed since 1839 and its claim to the earliest hotel rests on its continual license and being in the original building. Berrima prospered as being at a point on the Old Hume Highway, and there were fourteen hotels in or near the town in the 1840s. However, with the building of the railway which bypassed the town, the population decreased, and the town did not expand with no new houses built for a hundred years. In 1896, Sir Henry Parkes, Premier of New South Wales, planted an oak tree near the post office. The Berrima cement works were established in 1929.

There are many historic buildings in the town and the village as a whole is listed on the Register of the National Estate. Other notable buildings include the Holy Trinity Anglican Church designed by Edmund Blacket and built in 1849; and the St Francis Xavier Catholic Church built 1849-51 designed by Augustus Pugin, a notable British architect of Gothic-revival buildings. The Berrima Village Trust was established in 1963 to preserve historic buildings.

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