The Shire of Cowra became a political and administrative entity in 1980 upon the amalgamation of Cowra Municipality and Waugoola Shire, the latter having covered Cowra's rural hinterland. Cowra Shire lies between the uplands of the Great Dividing Range and the western plains which lead to the ‘outback’ of New South Wales and Central Australia (map 1). Cowra is about 300 kilometres west of Sydney. The Shire has an area of 2,801 square kilometres, a journey by road across it covering about 80 kilometres. About two-thirds of the population live in the township of Cowra, by far the largest population centre in the Shire. Only two others have populations much in excess of one hundred.

The Shire covers the area in which the Lachlan River, one of the major tributaries of the Murray-Darling system, rising near the Great Dividing Range, breaks out of mountainous terrain onto undulating countryside and plains. Over half of the Shire's land can be considered arable, and only seventeen per cent suitable for neither cultivation nor grazing. Thirty-three per cent is ‘highly regarded in the statewide context’ for cropping, with grain yields exceeding those of many other local government areas in the wheat belt of New South Wales (Nott, 1983: 6–9). Wyangala Dam at the eastern edge of the Shire has made water available for irrigation. Primary production includes grains, oilseeds, fruit, vegetables and livestock products, some of which are processed locally.