Thirroul
Small town, now a northern suburb of Greater
Wollongong, where D.H. Lawrence stayed and wrote 'Kangaroo'
Thirroul lies on the coast 69 km south of Sydney. The name derives
from an Aboriginal word, 'Thurrural' said to mean 'the Valley of the
Cabbage Tree Palms'. Once a coalmining settlement it is now a
transitional area between the escarpment 'villages' to the north and the
true suburbia to the south.
Thirroul has long been a beach resort although its proximity to
industrialised Wollongong meant that it was largely ignored until the
arrival of the electric train service in 1987. As it is the major train
stop of the Illawarra's outer northern suburbs it has become a focal
point for the growing legions of Sydneysiders who now commute from an
increasingly desirable, and expensive, commuter region.
This area was originally inhabited by the Wodi Wodi Aborigines and it
is from their language that we received the word 'Thurrural', said to
mean 'the Valley of the Cabbage Tree Palms'. When Captain James Cook
sailed up the eastern coast of Australia in 1770, the ship's botanist,
Joseph Banks, confirmed the presence of the Aborigines and the
predominance, in the area, of this tree type:
'The country today again made in slopes to the sea...The trees were
not very large and stood separate from each other without the least
underwood; among them we could discern many cabbage trees but nothing
else which we could call by any name. In the course of the night many
fires were seen'.
The first Europeans to live in the district were escaped convicts.
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