Young

Young is a town in the South West Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia and the largest town in the Hilltops Region.

Young is a town in the South West Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia and the largest town in the Hilltops Region. The "Lambing Flat" Post Office opened on 1 March 1861 and was renamed "Young" in 1863.Young is marketed as the Cherry Capital of Australia and every year hosts the National Cherry Festival. Young is situated on the Olympic Highway and is approximately 2 hours drive from the Canberra area. It is in a valley, with surrounding hills. The town is named after Sir John Young, the governor of NSW from 1861 to 1867.

Before European settlers arrived in Young, members of the Burrowmunditory tribe, a family group of the indigenous Wiradjuri Nation, lived in the region. Descendants of the Burrowmunditory clan still live in Young.James White was the first European settler in the district and established 'Burrangong' station in 1826 with a squatting claim of 260 square kilometres (100 sq mi). His story is told in the novel Brothers in Exile.

In late June 1860 Michael Sheedy from Binalong, and a group of other stockmen, were on James White’s 'Burrangong' pastoral run looking for horses.The sheltered area known as 'Lambing Flat' lay along a creek between heavily timbered hills.Stock yards had been built there and used to enclose strayed and wild horses from the surrounding country.The cook for the party, an American, "who was familiar with the appearance of many other goldfields, was struck with the appearance of the place".The cook washed several spadefuls of earth "and succeeded in getting a good prospect of gold".After procuring the horses the men returned to Binalong, 32 miles to the south-east, and after a few days Sheedy and six men returned with tools and provisions, "determined to test the auriferous quality of the place".The second dishful washed by the men produced a nugget of seven pennyweight.By late July 1860 word had spread and there were about fifty persons at Lambing Flat who had joined the search for gold.From November 1860 through to June 1861, anti-Chinese miners attacked Chinese gold miners in the area, now known as the infamous Lambing Flat riots.As gold became scarce, European miners began to resent what they saw as the greater success of the more industrious Chinese, and hence many Chinese miners were attacked, robbed and killed.The anti-Chinese rebels rallied in numbers of up to 3,000.Eventually the rioters were controlled, Chinese miners had their claims restored to them, but the New South Wales Parliament passed the Chinese Immigration Bill which restricted the number of Chinese that could be brought into New South Wales on any ship and imposed a tax per head on entry.

The town of Young was gazetted in 1861. The goldfields produced 15,000 kilograms (470,000 ozt) of gold sent by escort from the fields. Up to 20,000 miners worked the fields including about 2,000 Chinese miners.Later in the 1860s, some Chinese, who remained in the district, ran intensive and successful market gardens, supplying Young and other towns, even as far away as Wagga.The town was incorporated in 1882, with miller, Peter Cram, the first mayor.In 1889 Young was the first town in Australia to install electricity into the streets and homes of the township; Tamworth NSW had installed electricity to the streets only the previous year.

The former Young Shire was acknowledged as the first Local Government Area to institute a rural school bus system in New South Wales.

Owing to Young's far western location, it yields hot, dry summers and cool, damp winters; reflecting a distinctly "continental" climate of the South West Slopes region. Snow falls occasionally; notwithstanding its fairly low elevation of approximately 400 m, the windward position of Young exposes it to strong westerly frontal systems. Thus, places such as Goulburn farther east (but higher up) receive less winter moisture than Young, due to more adequate sheltering from these fronts.Climate data is sourced from Young Airport; at an elevation of 380 metres (1,250 ft) and operating since 1988.