Narrandera

Narrandera, town, south-central New South Wales, Australia. It lies on the Murrumbidgee River.

The site was settled in 1863 as a livestock station, and the settlement was proclaimed a town in 1880. The name Narrandera is Aboriginal, meaning “place of lizards.” Gazetted a borough in 1885, it was merged with Yanco Shire in 1960. Situated within the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, it serves, with the nearby towns of Leeton and Griffith, a district producing beef, fodder, merino sheep, poultry, fruit, wheat, and wool. Industries include flour mills and sawmills and factories for concrete, building stone, and plasterboard. Narrandera is at the junction of the Newell and Sturt highways and has rail and air connections to Sydney, some 275 miles (440 km) east-northeast, and to Melbourne, approximately the same distance south-southwest. Pop. (2006) local government area, 6,012; (2011) local government area, 5,902.