Big Hill is a bounded rural locality in

Upper Lachlan Shire Upper Lachlan Shire is a Local government in Australia, local government area in the Southern Tablelands region of New South Wales, Australia. The Shire was formed in February 2004 from Crookwell Shire and parts of Mulwaree, Gunning Shire, Gunni ...

to the north of

Marulan Marulan is a small town east of the Great Dividing Range and is located in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia. It is in the Goulburn Mulwaree Council local government area and the traditional lands of the Gundungurra people. It ...

in the

Southern Tablelands The Southern Tablelands is a geographic area of New South Wales, Australia, located south-west of Sydney and generally west of the Great Dividing Range. The area is characterised by high, flat country which has generally been extensively cl ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia. At the , it had a population of 44. The area is characterised with

agricultural Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created f ...

activities, predominantly

grazing In agriculture, grazing is a method of animal husbandry whereby domestic livestock are allowed outdoors to free range (roam around) and consume wild vegetations in order to feed conversion ratio, convert the otherwise indigestible (by human diges ...

, as well as

National Park A national park is a nature park designated for conservation (ethic), conservation purposes because of unparalleled national natural, historic, or cultural significance. It is an area of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that is protecte ...

s. Grazing was first introduced by

Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur (16 January 1788 – 21 October 1861) was an Australian colonist, politician, businessman and wool pioneer. The nephew of John Macarthur and son-in-law of former New South Wales governor, Philip Gidley King, he was we ...

nephew of John Macarthur, who established a 1000

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

farm, Arthursleigh, at Big Hill in 1819. By the start of the 20th century, Big Hill boasted a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

chapel A chapel (from , a diminutive of ''cappa'', meaning "little cape") is a Christianity, Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. First, smaller spaces inside a church that have their o ...

school A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the Educational architecture, building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most co ...

and a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

. Today, only the church remains, and Arthursleigh operates as an agriculture research and teaching centre of

the University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

. Big Hill Post Office opened on 1 November 1869 and closed in 1945. The main

geographical feature In geography and particularly in geographic information science, a geographic feature or simply feature (also called an object or entity) is a representation of phenomenon that exists at a location in the space and scale of relevance to geograph ...

s of Big Hill include ''Mount Modickmurribar'' from which the area is named, the

Wollondilly River The Wollondilly River, an Australian perennial river that is part of the Hawkesbury Nepean catchment, is located in the Southern Tablelands and Southern Highlands regions of New South Wales. The river meanders from its western slopes near Cr ...

to the east and the Tarlo River

to the west. Big Hill is roughly equivalent to the

cadastral A cadastre or cadaster ( ) is a comprehensive recording of the real estate or real property's metes and bounds, metes-and-bounds of a country.Jo Henssen, ''Basic Principles of the Main Cadastral Systems in the World,'/ref> Often it is represente ...

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

es of Cookbundoon and Eden Forest in the

county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

of Argyle.Robert McLean, The New atlas of Australia : the complete work containing over one hundred maps and full descriptive geography of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, together with numerous illustrations and copious indices (Sydney :J. Sands, 886) Map 11.

References

{{authority control Upper Lachlan Shire Localities in New South Wales">Upper Lachlan Shire">886) Map 11.

References

{{authority control Upper Lachlan Shire Localities in New South Wales Southern Tablelands