The area's rivers may have been the boundaries or connection-points of the three
traditional owners linked to this 'country'. During summertime, the high country was a meeting place for tribes, with
bogong moths being an abundant food source in the warmer months. British pastoralists began take the land in the area during the 1830s. In 1845, a
Court of Petty Sessions was established at Tumut with
Frederick Walker appointed as the inaugural magistrate. Walker later became notorious as the first commandant of the
Native Police force based mostly in
Queensland. Tumut Post Office opened 1 January 1849. A public hospital opened in the town in 1900. After many years of lobbying by the local community, construction of the railway line from
Gundagai began in 1901, reaching Tumut by 1903 with the first train arriving on 2 December that year. A further extension was built to
Batlow and
Kunama from a junction at Gilmore, a few kilometres southwest of Tumut. Train services were progressively reduced in the early 1980s before the final trains to
Cootamundra ran in January 1984 before being suspended when flood damage to the line was deemed not economical to repair. Tumut was one of the ten areas short-listed in 1908 as a site for the
Australian Capital Territory. Other locations that were short-listed include
Albury,
Armidale,
Bombala,
Dalgety,
Lake George,
Lyndhurst,
Orange,
Tooma and
Yass-Canberra. The site of the new capital city would not have been the existing town of Tumut. It seems two sites near Tumut for a new city were proposed; one to the east of Tumut, at a site in the valley of
Goobarragandra River, which is now part of the localities of
Little River and
Lacmalac, and another site between Tumut and
Adelong, near Gadara, under which Tumut itself would have become a part of the new Federal Territory. Planning work occurred for both sites. An earlier vote following inspections of potential sites in 1902 saw the new Federal
House of Representatives vote in favour of Tumut as the location for the capital, however the
Senate favoured Bombala so no consensus was reached. When federal parliamentarians put the final decision to a series of nine elimination ballots, in October 1908, Tumut was eliminated in the fifth ballot. The town's
rugby league team competed in the Riverina
Maher Cup competition, beginning as a fixture between teams from Gundagai and Tumut under
rugby union rules in 1920, before switching to league rules in 1921. ==Climate==