Nimmitabel is a small town in the Monaro

Monaro, New South Wales

Monaro is the name of a region in the south of New South Wales, Australia. A small area of Victoria near Snowy River National Park is geographically part of the Monaro, whilst the Australian Capital Territory is frequently considered part of the region: most towns have very close links with...

 region in southeast New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, in the Cooma-Monaro Shire  Local government area. At the 2006 census

Census in Australia

The Australian census is administered once every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The most recent census was conducted on 9 August 2011; the next will be conducted in 2016. Prior to the introduction of regular censuses in 1961, they had also been run in 1901, 1911, 1921, 1933,...

, Nimmitabel had a population of 237 people.

The town is 37 kilometres south of Cooma

Cooma, New South Wales

-Education: is Cooma's only public high school, it serves the town and seven of the neighbouring rural towns and villages such as Berridale, Jindabyne, Nimmitabel, Bredbo and Dalgety....

 and 75 km west of Bega

Bega, New South Wales

Bega is a town in the south-east of New South Wales, Australia in the Bega Valley Shire. It is the economic centre for the Bega Valley.-Place name:One claim is that place name Bega is derived from the local Aboriginal word meaning "big camping ground"....

. Nimmitabel is located on the highway which from Cooma to about 10 km south of Nimmitabel is both the Snowy Mountains Highway

Snowy Mountains Highway

The Snowy Mountains Highway is a state highway in New South Wales, Australia which traverses the Snowy Mountains.The highway runs across the highland region in the southern part of the State. It starts at its junction with the Hume Highway near Gundagai...

 (HWY 23) and the Monaro Highway

Monaro Highway

The Monaro Highway is a state highway in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria, Australia. The Victorian section was formerly known as the Cann Valley Highway until the 1980s....

 (HWY 18).

It is on the southern end of the Great Dividing Range

Great Dividing Range

The Great Dividing Range, or the Eastern Highlands, is Australia's most substantial mountain range and the third longest in the world. The range stretches more than 3,500 km from Dauan Island off the northeastern tip of Queensland, running the entire length of the eastern coastline through...

, at the west of the Monaro Range, and lies 20 km west of the Wadbilliga National Park

Wadbilliga National Park

Wadbilliga National Park is in south-eastern New South Wales Australia, 425 km southwest of Sydney via Cobargo, and 150 km south east of Canberra. The nearest towns are Narooma and Cobargo in the east, and Cooma on the plateau in the west....

.

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

Timeline

• • 1840 Locals started calling the village Nimoitebool
  • 1845 Appears on Townsend's map as Nimmitabel
  • 1858 Church was built
  • 1857 Renewal of license for hotel
    Public house
    A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...
    
    
  • 1858 Post office
    Post office
    A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
    
     arrives
  • 1861 Bell's Store
  • 1863 Separate Courthouse
    Courthouse
    A courthouse is a building that is home to a local court of law and often the regional county government as well, although this is not the case in some larger cities. The term is common in North America. In most other English speaking countries, buildings which house courts of law are simply...
    
     built
  • 1865 Geldmacher builds windmill
  • 1866 Cameron's Store opens
  • 1912 Railroad arrives
  • 1921 Area's first saw-mill opens

Trivia

Part of the movie, The Sundowners

The Sundowners

The Sundowners is a 1960 film that tells the story of an Australian outback family torn between the father's desires to continue his nomadic sheep-herding ways and the wife's and son's desire to settle down in one place...

was filmed in Nimmitabel in 1959.The daughter of a local grazier also trained the ducks for the film "Babe".

External links

• Aerial photo of Nimmitabel from Terraserver
• Information about Nimmitabel, including history and photos
• Some history from Peter Goed, particular focus on the 1950s
• Article: "The Day the Stars Came to Nimmitabel..The Making of the Sundowners" by Peter Goed @ Cooma-Monaro website (includes photos from the making of the film in 1959)