Captain Charles Sturt was the first European explorer to visit the Balranald area. This was in January 1803 as he was going down the Murrumbidgee River in a boat. In 1836, the explorer Major Thomas Mitchell camped on the site of Balranald during his trip to explore the south of Australia. The first person to begin farming was Benjamin Boyd, a squatter, in 1842. George Hobler settled in what became the town area in 1845. The town itself began when the police set up a camp at a spot where the river was easy to cross in 1848. They were there to support the Commissioner for Crown Lands, George James McDonald, who named the area after the town in Scotland where he was born.