The windfarm has become one of the defining sights of the Southern Tablelands. Drive the Hume Highway south of Goulburn, head west toward Crookwell, or climb the ranges above Bungonia, and you'll find turbines turning against big open sky. The plateau's elevation and consistent westerly winds made it an early target for wind energy developers in New South Wales, and the region now holds a concentration of windfarms that few comparable areas in Australia can match.
Why the Southern Tablelands suits wind energy
The Southern Tablelands sits at an average elevation of around 700 to 900 metres above sea level. That height matters. The plateau intercepts the prevailing westerlies before they lose momentum descending to the coast, and the open treeless ridgelines offer almost nothing to slow the airflow. Wind resource surveys conducted across the region consistently record mean wind speeds that meet or exceed the commercial viability threshold for modern turbines.
The land tenure also helped. Large pastoral holdings cover much of the plateau, and landholders found that hosting turbines on grazing country is compatible with sheep and cattle farming. Turbine footprints are modest. The paddocks between towers continue to be grazed right up to the base of each structure, which makes the arrangement financially attractive for farming families who were looking to diversify income across the 2000s and 2010s.
Crookwell: where it started
The Crookwell Wind Farm, commissioned in 1998, was one of the first commercial-scale windfarms in Australia. It stands on the ridge country west of Crookwell, a town that had already built an identity around cold-climate resilience and practical agriculture. The original Crookwell installation was small by today's standards, eight turbines producing around eight megawatts, but it established the Southern Tablelands as a viable wind energy zone and opened the door to every project that followed.
Crookwell 2 and subsequent expansions added capacity across the same ridgeline system over the following decade. The area around the town now has turbines visible from most elevated roads, a fact that has generated local debate but also a degree of local pride. The windfarm is part of the town's story now, as much as the potato sheds or the cold snaps that arrive each May.
Capital Wind Farm and the Taralga district
Capital Wind Farm, located in the district surrounding Taralga, is one of the largest windfarms in New South Wales. The project spans a broad ridge system north of Goulburn and west of the Hume corridor, with Capital Wind Farm operating 67 turbines at a generating capacity of around 140 megawatts. On a clear day the turbines are visible from considerable distances, rising above the grassland on the skyline like a slow-moving assembly.
Taralga itself sits close enough to the project that the windfarm has become part of the town's visual identity. Visitors driving through often stop to photograph the view from the ridge road, where turbines line the horizon in both directions. The project also contributes to local road maintenance funding and landowner income in what is otherwise a quiet pastoral economy.
Gullen Range Wind Farm
The Gullen Range Wind Farm sits along a ridgeline northeast of Crookwell, roughly parallel to the Abercrombie River valley system. It runs 73 turbines and has a generating capacity of around 166 megawatts, making it the largest windfarm in the immediate region by installed capacity. The ridge road that passes the site gives motorists a close look at the turbines from ground level, which gives a sense of scale that photographs don't quite convey. Each tower stands roughly 80 metres tall, with rotor blades adding another 40 metres of sweep radius above that.
The surrounding country is classic Southern Tablelands: open pasture, granite outcrops, and long views to the east toward the escarpment. On gusty days the turbines run at full rotation, and the combined sound is a consistent low hum audible from the road shoulder.
What visitors actually encounter
The windfarms of the Southern Tablelands aren't tourist attractions in a formal sense. There are no visitor centres, no guided tours of active sites, and no public access to turbine bases at most locations. What you get instead is a landscape experience: driving through country where the scale of wind energy becomes tangible. The views from the Crookwell district roads and the Taralga ridge are genuinely striking, and they pair naturally with other reasons to be in the area.
The region around Bungonia offers a contrast worth noting. That eastern edge of the Southern Tablelands drops sharply into gorge country rather than plateau, so the windfarm landscape gives way quickly to something completely different within a short drive. The Southern Tablelands rewards this kind of circuit: plateau, ridge, gorge, and the old pastoral towns in between.
The broader picture for the region
New South Wales has committed to significant renewable energy expansion through the Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, and the Southern Tablelands sits within one of the state's designated Renewable Energy Zones. That means further windfarm development is likely in coming years, with projects in planning or assessment stages across several districts. Energy Corporation of NSW coordinates the Renewable Energy Zone program and publishes current project statuses for the Central-West Orana and South West REZs, which border or overlap with the Tablelands corridor.
For communities across the plateau, the question isn't whether wind energy will be part of the landscape. It already is. The conversation now is about how new projects are planned, what community benefit agreements look like, and how the visual and acoustic character of the plateau changes as turbine technology scales up. Larger modern turbines produce more power per tower, which means fewer towers for the same output. That trade-off shapes what the plateau will look like in another decade.
The Southern Tablelands windfarm corridor is, at this point, one of the most mature wind energy landscapes in eastern Australia. It's worth seeing on its own terms.