TUMUT

town, southeastern New South Wales, Australia. It lies along the Tumut River, at the northern approach to the Australian Alps. The river valley, explored in 1824 by Hamilton Hume and William Hovell, was settled in the 1830s. The town was surveyed in 1848, and its name is derived from the Aboriginal word doomut, or river campsite. Tumut was proclaimed a municipality in 1887 and a shire in 1928. It serves an agricultural (livestock, tobacco, fodder, fruit, vegetables) and mining (granite, chromite) district and has a butter factory, a eucalyptus-oil distillery, and sawmilling, pineboard, and millet-broom industries. Tumut lies along the Snowy Mountains Highway. Pop. (1986) 6,099; (1991) 5,955.