Shepparton

Shepparton (/ˈʃɛpərtən/) (Yortayorta: Kanny-goopna) is a regional city located on the floodplain of the Goulburn River in northern Victoria, Australia, approximately 181 kilometres (112 mi) north-northeast of Melbourne. As of the 2021 census, the locality of Shepparton had a population of 32,067. The broader urban area, including the adjacent town of Mooroopna, had a combined population of 49,862.

It began as a sheep station and river crossing in the mid-19th century, before undergoing a major transformation as a railway town. Today it is an agricultural and manufacturing centre, and the centre of the Goulburn Valley irrigation system, one of the largest centres of irrigation in Australia. It is also a major regional service city and the seat of local government and civic administration for the City of Greater Shepparton, which includes the surrounding towns of Tatura, Merrigum, Mooroopna, Murchison, Dookie, Toolamba and Grahamvale.

The name of Shepparton is derived from the surname of one of the area's first European settlers, Sherbourne Sheppard, and not, as is sometimes imagined, from Shepperton, England.

The Yorta Yorta name for the area is 'Kanny-goopna' with 'goopna' meaning 'deep waterholes by which people camped'. Conversely, the name for the big waterhole at the Broken River at Benalla is 'Marangan', meaning deep pond or lagoon in Taungurung Eastern Kulin language.

Colloquially (and not inconsistent with the Australian propensity for name-shortening or diminutives), the city is also known as "Shepp" (/ˈʃɛp/), as adopted by community entities that incorporate the abbreviated form into their name, e.g., the Shepparton Agricultural Society, or "Sheppshow".

Prior to the European settlement of Australia, the area was inhabited by the Yorta Yorta, the indigenous Australian people whose country covers the junction of the Goulburn and Murray Rivers in present-day northern Victoria and southern New South Wales. The town of Shepparton and surrounds are on the country of the Kailtheban clan of the Yorta Yorta nation.

Surveyor General Thomas Mitchell was the first European to be recorded traveling through the area, crossing the Goulburn River in 1836 on his return to Sydney from an expedition to survey the Darling River and its tributaries. On Mitchell's recommendation, Joseph Hawdon and Charles Bonney would follow two years later, camping on the town site by the Goulburn River in 1838 while droving cattle from Albury to Adelaide.

The first permanent settlement in the area was the "Tallygaroopna" sheep station, established in the early 1840s. By 1843 the station was being run by a man named Sherbourne Sheppard, the town's eventual namesake. With the advent of the Victorian gold rush in the 1850s, the area became a popular river crossing point for miners travelling east from the Bendigo and Ballarat goldfields. As there was no bridge across the Goulburn River, Irish entrepreneur Patrick Macguire set up a punt service to ferry travellers across the river, erecting the town's first building in the process, the punt house. Macguire sold the building to John Hill in 1853, who converted it into a hotel, the Emu Bush Inn. This settlement soon became known as Macguire's Punt, a name it would keep into the 1870s. A post office opened in February 1854, but closed in July that same year.