Kangaroo Valley is a river valley along the Kangaroo River in the Shoalhaven region of New South Wales, Australia, located west of the seaside in the City of Shoalhaven. It is also the name of the small suburb within it, formerly known as Osborne, with a population of 879 in the . The township is accessed by the Moss Vale Road, which links Moss Vale to the Princes Highway at Bomaderry a little north of Nowra via the B73 route. General , the small town has a variety of arts and craft shops, restaurants and cafes, a hotel, club, post office, supermarket and other businesses, including an ambulance station, general practitioner and a chemist. Kangaroo Valley has a bus service to/from Nowra or Moss Vale. Kennedy's Bus Company operates to Kangaroo Valley via Cambewarra. Events held in the town include the Kangaroo Valley Agricultural and Horticultural Show in February each year, Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival in October each year, biannually the Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival and monthly markets at Kangaroo Valley Village Markets. History The first inhabitants of Kangaroo Valley were the Australian Aboriginal Wodi-Wodi people, who had reportedly occupied the land for around 20,000 years before the European settlement of Australia in 1788. An 1826 census indicated 79 Aborigines lived in the valley in five separate encampments. The first recorded European sighting of the valley was in April 1812, when surveyor-explorer George Evans passed through the area as he travelled north from his exploration of Jervis Bay. Evans reportedly claimed that the valley offered a view that "no painter could beautify." The area was first settled in 1817 when Charles Throsby, an explorer and Captain Richard Brooks, a cattleman, opened the area for colonial settlement. The felling and exporting of Australian Red Cedar (Toona ciliata) trees quickly became the main industry in Kangaroo Valley. By the mid-1840s, a number of dairy farmers made the region their home, specialising in the production of butter as other dairy products such as milk couldn't be exported as they would often curdle long before they had completed the treacherous journey out of Kangaroo Valley to neighbouring settlements. By the 1870s, activity had begun to concentrate in the area that is now the village, as other centres in Kangaroo Valley, such as Trendally, died with the dairy industry in the region. Both the Church of the Good Shepherd (built in 1870–72) and rectory (built