Nimmitabel

Postcode: 2631

Nimmitabel is a small town in the Monaro region in southeast New South Wales, Australia, in the Cooma-Monaro Shire Local government area. At the 2001 census, Nimmitabel had a population of 238. The town is 37 kilometres south of Cooma and 75 km west of Bega. Nimmitabel is located on the highway which from Cooma to about 10 km south of Nimmitabel is both the Snowy Mountains Highway (HWY 23) and the Monaro Highway (HWY 18).

It is on the southern end of the Great Dividing Range, at the west of the Monaro Range, and lies 20 km east of the Wadbilliga National Park.

Nimmitabel means "the place where many waters start and divide" in the local Aboriginal language. Many various spellings were adopted for the town, including: Nimmitybelle, Nimithybale, Nimitybell, Nimity Belle and Nimmitabel.

The first European settlers had arrived by 1839 and other properties were taken up by graziers in the 1840s. The village began to develop in the 1850s around an intersection of tracks. The Nimmitabel Inn was established here in 1854. A police station was in existence by 1855 and the village was proclaimed in 1858. A post office opened that year and town allotments went on sale. By 1859 there was a store, a private school and a second hotel.

The village picked up traffic bound for Kiandra in the 1860s and it began to expand (it was once more populous and important than today). A courthouse, watchhouse, flour mill, bank,. provisional school and two churches soon appeared. A butter factory was built when dairying began to develop in the district towards the end of the 19th century.

The railway arrived in 1912 (closed 1988) and timber-milling got under way in 1921 with the opening of the area's first timber mill. In 1959 Nimmitabel was used as one of the locations for the filming, by Warner Brothers, of Jon Cleary's novel The Sundowners. The town has recently received something of a restorative face-lift.

For more information about this town, click here