The history of these towns dates back to the early expansion of the pastoralists.
In 1843 Edward Green took up 54 000 hectares of land in NSW naming it ‘Barham’.
While across the river in Victoria, the Gannawarra Run was established.
Koondrook eventually was settled by farmers about 1881.
There has been over recent years an increasing demand of tourists.
Just out of town are the extensive river red gum forests of Koondrook and Perricoota.
For many years the twin towns were important trading stops on the riverboat journeys and also developed sawmills which provided red gum sleepers for the Victorian Railways.
Of the two towns, Koondrook developed faster, perhaps due to Barham’s more isolated location. After the towns became linked by the bridge over the Murray in 1904, Barham’s township and population began to grow.
Beyond the wetlands is Kow Swamp, where in the late 1960s anthropologists uncovered 13,000 year old fossilised bones, which gave way to the notion that at least two distinct Aboriginal clans had resided there.
