Business categories in Walgett, NSW

Welcome to Walgett, NSW

Walgett is a rural town in northern NSW. It is 691 kilometres north-west of Sydney. It has a population of over 2,200.

History

‘Walgett’ is from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘the meeting place of two rivers’.

A post office was gazetted for ‘Walgett on the Barwon River’ in 1851. The town site was surveyed in 1859. Walgett was proclaimed a town in 1885.

Local property Euroka Station was the site of the invention of the Wolseley Shearing Machine. The machine revolutionised the shearing industry. Tested at Bourke in 1888, 184,000 sheep were shorn.

The indigenous civil rights group, the Freedom Riders, arrived in Walgett on 15 February 1965. The group protested discrimination against indigenous Australians. A local farmer forced the group’s bus off the road outside the town. This event led to the plight of Indigenous Australians receiving international media attention.

Lifestyle and Entertainment

It is a regional hub for wool, wheat and cotton industries. Prolonged drought has seen lucerne and other good hay crops grown successfully.

Walgett is the gateway to the New South Wales opal fields.

Approximately 50% of Walgett’s population is indigenous.