Binalong, New South Wales
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Binalong (postcode: 2584, ) is a village in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia 37 km north-west of Yass in Yass Valley Shire. It had a population of about 286 people in 2001.
The indigenous people of the district were part of the Ngunnawal people. The first Europeans recorded as visiting the area were the exploratory party of Hamilton Hume in 1821.
The name of the town is believed to derive either from an Aboriginal word meaning 'towards a high place' or from 'Bennelong', the name of a noted Aborigine.
Binalong lay beyond the border of the Nineteen Counties which was the formal legal extent of European settlement in New South Wales. However, squatters settled in the district prior to the formal establishment of squatting districts in 1839. From 1847 there was a permanent police presence in Binalong and a court of petty sessions. The old Cobb and Co inn dates from that time as a staging post for Cobb and Co coaches.
The town was gazetted in 1850 and flourished as it was a stop over on the route to the goldfields at Lambing Flat or Young. The public school was established in 1861. The railway arrived in 1876.
The family of the poet Banjo Paterson moved to the Binalong district in 1869 when he was five years old. He attended the primary school in Binalong but later went to boarding school in Sydney returning home in the holidays. The district features in a number of his poems, for example, Pardon, the son of Reprieve. Paterson's father is buried in the local cemetery.
The presence of gold meant also that there were bushrangers in the area. The grave of John Gilbert is near the town in the former police paddock. He was a member of the Gardiner-Hall gang and shot by police in 1865.
