Narrogin

Narrogin, Western Australia

Narrogin, town, southwestern Western Australia. It is situated on the Great Southern Highway and near the Albany Highway, approximately 120 miles (190 km) southeast of Perth.

Sheepherders were the first non-Aboriginal people to settle the area, in the mid-19th century. The town developed in the 1880s, when the Great Southern Railway came through the site, and a hotel was erected at the trackside. Settlement grew around the hotel, and a townsite was gazetted in the 1890s. It became a municipality in 1907. The name Narrogin derives from the Aboriginal term gnargijin, meaning “place of water.” The town is the junction of rail lines extending east to the Wheat Belt, west and south to the coast, and northwest to Perth (105 miles [170 km]). It retained its importance as a railway hub into the 1970s, when road transport largely took over. Narrogin is a market for the grain, wool, and pigs produced in the area. Large mallet-tree (eucalyptus or gum-tree) plantations yield tannin. The Narrogin Farm School was founded in 1914. Pop. (2006) local government area, 4,238; (2011) local government area, 4,219.