NSW's Murrumbidgee Riverina Capital — Wagga Beach, Botanic Gardens, and the RAAF's Training Heart
Wagga Wagga — 'Wagga' to everyone who lives there — is NSW's largest inland city, a Murrumbidgee River city at the heart of the Riverina wine and grain country. Wagga Beach, a river beach on the Murrumbidgee, was ranked ninth in Australia's top 20 beaches — an unusual honour for an inland city. The RAAF Base Wagga handles 70% of Australia's military training, and the Wagga Wagga Botanic Gardens' free-flight aviary and mini zoo make it one of the most family-friendly regional green spaces in NSW.
The Wiradjuri people, one of the largest Aboriginal nations in Australia, have lived in the Riverina for thousands of years, and Wagga Wagga sits within their traditional Country — the name is a Wiradjuri reduplication meaning 'place of many crows.' European settlement began in 1821 when John Thursby established a station on the Murrumbidgee, and the town grew as a wool and grain trading centre, eventually becoming a regional city of 70,000 serving a catchment of 175,000 people from southern NSW and northern Victoria.