Burrill Lake

Burrill Lake is a small village on the Princes Highway in the South Coast region of New South Wales, Australia.

Burrill Lake is a small village on the Princes Highway in the South Coast region of New South Wales, Australia. It is a seaside suburb of the Milton-Ulladulla district, a part of the City of Shoalhaven local government area and surrounds the lake of the same name. In 2016, the population Burrill Lake has a population of 1,465. The name of the town is derived from an Aboriginal word meaning 'wallaby'.

The first inhabitants and traditional land owners of the area surrounding Burrill Lake were the Murramarang indigenous people. The area is regarded as extremely significant archaeological site in terms of the age of some artifacts discovered nearby. In 1931, members of the Anthropological Society of New South Wales excavated an Aboriginal rock shelter believed to be in excess of 20,000 years old, the oldest known site on the Australian East Coast.The first European settlers arrived in the mid 19th Century. The Ireland family took up an estate on the south side of the lake and built a timber mill. A bridge was first constructed across the estuary in 1881. A primary school opened in 1876 and operated until 1934. By the early 20th Century, the collection of shell grit helped to diversify the local economy and experiments were conducted in the early 1900s to burn and calcify the grit to make lime with considerable success.

By the 1920s Burrill Lake had earned a reputation as a holiday destination, becoming popular with campers. This in turn led to growth in the town and the construction of new amenities. By the 1930s a mail service was in place, and by 1946 an open-air theatre was operating in the town.