Delegate, New South Wales

Delegate is a small town in New South Wales, Australia in Snowy Monaro Regional Council, 523km south of the state capital, Sydney.Delegate lies just a few kilometres from the state border between New South Wales and Victoria. At the, Delegate had a population of 351 people. The township of Delegate lies on the Delegate River.Location and featuresThe place name, Delegate, could have derived from an aboriginal word meaning "high mountains". The first village began in 1852 and was situated at Hayden's Bog on the property now called "Bendolba". Mount Delegate, or commonly known in the local area as "Delegate Hill", is situated across the border in Victoria and stands at approximately above sea level. It is the only single mountain in the Great Divide and of an unusual shape. Because of its height, Mount Delegate now has several telecommunication towers servicing vital services to both NSW & Victoria.HistoryThe original owners & inhabitants of this area were the Aboriginal peoples of the Ngarigo Nation.The Delegate area was settled by Europeans in the 1820s when Charles Campbell, youngest son of Robert Campbell of Duntroon, directed that "some of the shepherds move their animals towards the areas of the winter snows. They trekked, probably via Cooma, and settled a large number of stock in an area where they formed a new station. This the Campbells called Delegate. the stock spread over a large area and, as there was no other occupant of the district, 34,000 acres were annexed to the occupation of Robert Campbell, who later bought this property. Subsequently, while there were still no other serious competitors in the vicinity, Campbell's stock occupied a further 21,000 acres which came to be called Mt Cooper." Following Robert Campbell's death the property at Delegate passed to his unmarried daughter, Sophia and from her to her nephews, John and Fredrick Jeffreys.