Bowral

Bowral sits at around seven hundred metres in the Southern Highlands, which gives it cold winters, cool summers and the deciduous trees and hedged gardens that made it a retreat for Sydney money from the nineteenth century onward. Each spring, Corbett Gardens is planted with tens of thousands of tulips for Tulip Time, a festival running since 1961 that fills the town for a fortnight. Don Bradman grew up here, and the Bradman Museum and International Cricket Hall of Fame sits beside the oval where he learned to bat. The main street runs to antique shops, bookshops and restaurants, and Mount Gibraltar above town gives views across the highlands.

History

The name comes from a Ngunnawal-Gundungurra word for nearby Mount Gibraltar, or perhaps from the Dharawal bowrel, high, in the country of a Gandangara clan, and the first European to come was the ex-convict John Wilson, sent south by Governor Hunter, followed by John Warby, the botanist George Caley, the Hume brothers, John Oxley and Charles Throsby; Governor Macquarie granted Oxley 2,400 acres that later became Bowral. The town grew fast from the 1860s to the 1890s with the Sydney to Melbourne railway, the Anglican church of St Simon and St Jude, designed by Edmund Blacket, was built in 1874, the mountain retreat Craigieburn in 1885, and from 1887 residents planted deciduous trees along the streets (Wikipedia, Bowral).

The main sights

• Tulip Time - Corbett Gardens planted with tens of thousands of bulbs each spring.
• The Bradman Museum - cricket history beside the oval where Bradman played.
• The main street - antique dealers, bookshops and restaurants.
• Mount Gibraltar - lookouts over the Southern Highlands above the town.

When to go

September to October for the tulips and spring gardens; autumn from March to May for the deciduous colour the highlands are known for. Winter is cold with frost and occasional snow flurries. Tulip Time fills accommodation across the region.

Practical notes

Outside the festival and autumn colour, Bowral is a quiet country town with limited sights. Prices are high, reflecting the weekender market. Winter here is genuinely cold by Australian standards, and many visitors underestimate it.

Nearby

Moss Vale and Berrima are minutes away; Fitzroy Falls lies southeast.

Key facts