Fitzroy Falls

Country, early journeys and the falls

A Society history describes the area as a meeting place on routes travelled by Aboriginal groups before European settlement, including Dharawal, Wodi Wodi and Gundungurra people. It also traces artist Conrad Martens’ visit and a sketch held by the State Library of NSW. The historical account should be read alongside local Aboriginal knowledge and reviewed with community.^[7][11]

Council’s community heritage review records that Governor Sir Charles Fitzroy visited the falls in 1850 and that the falls were subsequently named for him. The area was surveyed in 1862 and a town planned, but little development followed. By 1882 about 4,000 acres around the falls had been reserved, when the site was already a local sightseeing attraction. The review describes the village as remaining small, with several dozen houses, a small church and surrounding farmland.^[6]

The development of the falls was contested as well as planned. Philip Morton records that after the 1882 public reserve was established, a village was laid out nearby but no lots sold. In 1887 a proposal to remove land from the reserve and sell about 190 acres as town and suburban allotments drew protests in Bowral and Moss Vale; opponents feared drainage would reduce the waterfall’s flow. The proposed sale was abandoned. Reserve and survey records can help distinguish the earlier surveyed town from this later proposal and show their exact boundaries.^[11]

The reserve around the falls became part of a broader conservation story. National Parks records the Tallowa Primitive Area between Fitzroy Falls and the Shoalhaven River in 1934, followed by a larger park established in 1938 to protect native plants and animals. Bundanoon and Belmore Falls reserves were added in 1968, linking more of the escarpment landscape within the park.^[13]

Ulster Park and the landscape

Ulster Park, on the road toward Fitzroy Falls, is described in the Society’s March 2021 account as a stone house built for Peter Francis Hart in the 1880s. The issue follows the de Mestre family’s residence there and reproduces Doug Cull’s local history. For a particular date or occupant, check the original land and family records alongside this account.^[8]

Former Society president Doug Cull bought Ulster Park in 1959 and described the work of restoring and farming the property in a contribution to Echoes through the Mist. A 2025 Society article brings together his own recollection, family biography and the Society’s archives, linking pastoral work, rare cattle breeding and community events to the property. Ulster Park is private; the article is a starting point for further research.^[10]

The district’s botany has a connection to Janet Cosh, a foundation member and archivist of the Society. After studying local plants, she prepared an herbarium for Morton National Park; the Society’s tribute records that her bequest helped establish the Janet Cosh Room at the Fitzroy Falls Visitor Centre. Her notebooks, photographs, vegetation surveys and maps were among the material she left to the University of Wollongong.^[9]