Gerringong () is a town located about ten minutes drive south of Kiama, and about twenty minutes north of Nowra in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia in the Municipality of Kiama. At the , Gerringong had a population of 3,966. One theory says that the name derives from an Aboriginal word meaning "fearful place". History Aboriginal people of the Dharawal language group are the original inhabitants and traditional custodians of the area now known as Gerringong and its surroundings. The first Europeans to pass through the district on land were probably survivors of the wreck of the Sydney Cove who trekked more than 700 km along the coast, during 1797. George Bass explored the nearby coast, later in 1797, during his voyage that revealed the existence of the Shoalhaven River to the colonial settlers. The first Europeans working in the area were red cedar cutters, who were first recorded as having visited and logged in the area in 1814. As in much of coastal New South Wales, the cleared land was used for dairy farming and cedar cutting died out, as the cedar trees disappeared. Dairy farming became the predominant primary industry and remains so to this day. Gerringong had a small boat harbour used for the export of cedar and dairy produce. The Surveyor-General John Oxley and Assistant Surveyor-General James Meehan led two separate but concurrent expeditions passing through the Gerringong area in late 1819. Oxley proceeded down the coast by sea to the Shoalhaven. Meehan went overland, starting from the Minnamurra River and meeting Oxley at the Shoalhaven. Oxley's report of good soil in the area increased interest in agricultural settlement. In 1824, Governor Brisbane reserved 600 acres (2.4 km²) for the present Gerringong township. In 1827, Michael Hindmarsh and his family were granted 640 acres (2.6 km²) and became the first settler in the Gerringong area. In 1829, Gerringong was incorporated into the postal system. Aboriginal people in the area of Gerringong continued to state their ownership of it—including Hindmarsh's grant—in the 1840s. By then, the settlers' clearing of the sub-tropical rainforest was transforming the landscape completely—to lush pastures suited to dairy cattle—and depriving the original inhabitants of the land, environment and land-based food sources upon which they had depended for thousands of years. Effectively barred from private land, they were confined to unalienated 'government' land. Alne Bank homestead was built in 1851 for