NARRANDERA

town, south central New South Wales, Australia, on the Murrumbidgee River. Settled in 1863 as a livestock station, it was proclaimed a town in 1880 and given an Aboriginal name meaning place of lizards. Gazetted a borough in 1885, it was merged with Yanco Shire in 1960. Lying within the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas, 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, pipe, building stone, cordials, and plasterboard. Narrandera is at the junction of the Newell and Sturt highways and has rail and air connections to Sydney, 272 mi (438 km) east-northeast, and to Melbourne. Pop. (1981) 5,013.