Gundagai

Geography

Gundagai is an inland town with an elevation of . Almost all of the shire is located in the South West Slopes bio-region and is part of the Riverina agricultural region. The eastern part of the shire (towards Wee Jasper) can also be considered part of the South Eastern Highlands bioregion.

North Gundagai is situated on top of significant, Jindalee Group, Cambrian period geology from which the chrysotile asbestos bearing Gundagai serpentinite originates also indicating prehistoric links to the Gondwana supercontinent.

The Shire has been extensively cleared for agriculture and more than 80% of the area is used for dryland cropping and grazing. Less than 1% of the shire is managed for conservation. There are few remaining examples of the original vegetation cover. Seasonal variation is great, especially about the maximum temperatures. Summers are hot, sunny and prone to dry periods; winters are cool and cloudy with many rain days and occasional sleet, though snowfalls are rare.

Heritage listings

Gundagai has a number of heritage-listed sites, including:

Cootamundra–Tumut railway: Gundagai Rail Bridge over Murrumbidgee River
Cootamundra–Tumut railway: Gundagai railway station
Middleton Drive: Prince Alfred Bridge

Economy

Other than tourism generated by bush appeal and the historic bridges, Gundagai's economy remains driven by sheep and cattle, as well as wheat, lucerne and maize production.

As of 2005, secondary industries in Gundagai included the Gundagai Meat Processors Plant and D J Lynch Engineering. The meatworks is the shire's largest single employer, with over 100 employees.

Gold mining

Gold was identified by the geologist Rev. W. B. Clarke at Gundagai in 1842. A gold rush hit the area in 1858 following further discoveries of gold. Mining continued initially until 1875, with a second gold rush in 1894. Mines operated again until well into the 20th century with some mining activity still occurring in 2007. The best known historical mines were the Robinson and Rice's Mine (Long Tunnel Mine) a few miles to the south west of Gundagai and the Prince of Wales Mine (where Herbert Hoover, the future President of the United States, was the mining engineer in about 1900) a few miles to the immediate west of Gundagai. Both mines struck the orebody in quartz reefs along serpentine/diorite contact zones with finds of gold telluride (of bismuth origin) also found.

Nangus Island in the middle of the Murrumbidgee River at Nangus is marked as one of the early goldfields and was previously named 'M'Arthur Island'. It is adjacent to where the highly auriferous Adelong Creek enters the Murrumbidgee.

Asbestos mining

Asbestos was first mined commercially in Australia, at Gundagai. Actinolite was mined along Jones Creek just to the west of the town but there are several deposits in the immediate area. Some fibres were two feet long. Prior to 1918 this was the only source of asbestos in New South Wales. Northern Gundagai is built on a hill sometimes known as 'Asbestos Hill' and excavations in the area free the asbestos into the air.

Chromite, talc, magnesite, copper and slate were also mined at Gundagai.

Notable places

Gundagai Bakery

Gundagai Bakery is the oldest bakery in Australia, opening in 1864.

Rusconi's marble masterpiece

Local monumental mason Frank Rusconi, carved a miniature Baroque Italian palace from 20,948 pieces of marble collected from around New South Wales. The work is 1.2 metres high and, commencing in 1910, took 28 years to complete. It can be seen in the Gundagai tourist office. which was cast at Oliver's Foundry in Sydney.

Niagara Café

The Niagara Café opened in 1938 and was a notable stop on the Hume Highway. The cafe makes much of a brief visit by then Prime Minister, John Curtin, in 1942, with a display in the window of the cafe of the crockery used by Curtin and Curtin's link to the cafe. In August 2019, the cafe closed and was put up for sale; it was subsequently restored by its new owners and reopened in June 2022.

Heritage listed items

thumb|Court House, completed in 1859, was one of the first stone buildings to be erected after the floods of 1852. The interior was originally of red cedar but was destroyed by a fire in 1943 and it was rebuilt with mountain ash. The monument in front of the building is a Boer War memorial.

A number of places in Gundagai are on the New South Wales state heritage register and the Register of the National Estate.

Gundagai rail bridge over Murrumbidgee River
Gundagai Railway Station and yard group
Gundagai Courthouse
Gundagai District Hospital
Old Gundagai Town Site
Prince Alfred Bridge

River crossings

Gundagai is located at a crossing place of the Murrumbidgee River. There were several places at Gundagai that travellers could and did cross the river. The route across the Murrumbidgee at Gundagai eventually became the Great South Road.

The Main Roads Management Act of June 1858 declared the Great Southern Road, from near Sydney through Goulburn and Gundagai to Albury, as one of the three main roads in the colony. However, its southern reaches were described as only a 'scarcely formed bullock track' as late as 1858. The road was improved in the mid-1860s with some sections near Gundagai 'metalled' and all creeks bridged between Adelong Creek (approximately 10 kilometres south of Gundagai) and Albury. In 1914 the road was declared a main road of New South Wales, and subsequently designated as state highway 2 and named the Hume Highway in 1928. The highway bypassed Gundagai in 1977 with the opening of the Sheahan Bridge.

Fords and former bridges

There are several old fords at Gundagai, including:

the one at the western end of Hanley Street that crosses Jones Creek
a ford on the southern continuation of Bourke Street across Jones Creek
one at the western end of Sheridan Lane that crosses Jones Creek
a ford at the western end of William Street that crosses Jones Creek
the Otway Street ford across Morleys Creek
a 1950s concrete ford that crosses Morleys Creek on the immediate western side of Yarri Bridge
a very old ford that crosses Morleys Creek east of the Yarri Bridge
the Warramore Ford that crosses the Murrumbidgee across to Tarrabandra between the Gundagai showground and Mingay
the Sandy Falls ford
the ford across Muttama Creek at the Nine Mile, Coolac, that is a well noted crossing place in local poetry, folklore and history
the Gundagai township ford of the Murrumbidgee in line with Otway Street
'Adelong Crossing Place', now 'Tumblong', where there used to be a ford across Adelong Creek

There is also the Wantabadgery crossing place that these days has been replaced by the low level Mundarlo Bridge, downstream of Gundagai.

Often bridges have replaced fords but not always in exactly the same location, as bridges require high stream banks, whereas fords favour low banks. Two known old bridges on Morleys Creek no longer exist. Learys Bridge, a wooden bridge that crossed Morleys Creek in line with Byron Street, Gundagai was burned down by Gundagai Shire Council in the 1990s. Rileys Bridge that crossed Morleys Creek at the midpoint between Byron and Homer Streets was washed away in the 1851 Gundagai flood.

Bridges

thumb|left|250px|The [[Prince Alfred Bridge crosses the Murrumbidgee River at Gundagai, photographed c. 1885.]]

thumb|250px|left|The Prince Alfred Bridge; part of the old Hume Highway

In 1867, a wrought iron truss bridge, the Prince Alfred Bridge, was completed across the Murrumbidgee River. The bridge was designed by William Christopher Bennett and was constructed by Francis Bell and Frederick Augustus Franklin and had a total length of 314 m, including three wrought iron truss spans each of 31.4 m across the river itself, two southern approach spans of timber, and twenty-three northern approach spans of 9.14 m, also of timber, rising on a gradient of 1 in 30 from the level of the floodplain. It was the first iron truss bridge to be built in New South Wales.

Sometime before 1896, the twenty-three northern spans were replaced with a longer structure consisting of 105 timber spans varying from 4.6 m to 9.14 m long, crossing the full width of the floodplain. In that year a ramp was installed on the western side of the bridge six spans north of the three main spans, in roughly the same location as the present ramp, in order to divert traffic from the timber approach spans, presumably because of maintenance problems with these spans.

In 1896, the 105 northern approach spans were replaced by a new approach structure of seventy-six spans on a different alignment, and the southern approach was slightly lengthened, giving a total length of 922 metres, which was 12 m less than the previous length. It remained the longest bridge in New South Wales until 1932 when the Sydney Harbour Bridge was completed, . In 2010, it was duplicated to carry the southbound carriageway of the Hume Highway.

As an iconic Australian town

Although a small town, Gundagai is a popular topic for writers, including writers of poems and songs, and has become the representation of the typical Australian country town. Gundagai also has a long and strong oral tradition or folklore related to both Aboriginal and European events, as the location was an important gathering place and river crossing for teamsters ("bullockies"), bush travellers, swagmen, shearers and drovers,. James Riley's 'The Gundagai Calamity', Jack Moses's 'Nine Miles From Gundagai', and Jack O'Hagan's songs 'Where the Dog Sits on the Tuckerbox (Five Miles from Gundagai)', 'Along The Road To Gundagai', 'Snake Gully Swagger', and 'When a Boy from Alabama Meets a Girl from Gundagai'. Gundagai also features in the song 'The Grand Old Hills of Gundagai'. A 1971 educational short film, Mainly for Women, concerned a young woman who migrates from Gundagai to Sydney. A 2010 short story collection by Jeanine Leane, Purple Threads, won a major literary award, the David Unaipon Award, and was shortlisted for a Commonwealth literary award.

Other references in literature include Banjo Paterson's "The Road to Gundagai", and the traditional ballad 'Flash Jack from Gundagai'. The great British folksinger A. L. Lloyd, who spent time in Australia, recorded both the shearing song 'Flash Jack from Gundagai' and 'The Road to Gundagai'.

Additionally, the town is mentioned in Henry Lawson's 'Scots of the Riverina,' and C. J. Dennis's 'The Traveller'. Miles Franklin's 'Brent of Bin Bin' saga is set in the area, and it includes an account of the flood of 1852.

Culture

Sport

thumb|Aerial view of Anzac Park Oval in Gundagai

The most popular sport in Gundagai is rugby league. The Gundagai Tigers play in the Group 9 Rugby League competition. The club plays at Anzac Park Oval, often drawing crowds up to several thousands for derbies against Tumut and Junee.

Cultural events

The Snake Gully Cup festival is held each November featuring the Snake Gully Cup two-day racing carnival. It is one of southern New South Wales' premier race events. The idea of conducting a race called the Snake Gully Cup was originally floated in a committee meeting of the Gundagai Adelong racing club in the early 1970s. The race however did not materialise due to the lack of support from the committee of the day. The idea gained real momentum at the unveiling of the statues of Dad, Dave, Mum and Mabel at the Snake Gully Service Centre in November 1979 when Ted Tout, one of the principles of the centre mentioned the possibility of a Snake Gully Cup being run as a picnic race meeting similar to the popular Bong Bong Cup meeting. In November 1982, the Gundagai Adelong Racing Club conducted a mid-week race meeting as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations for the Dog on the Tuckerbox. The feature race at the meeting was the Snake Gully Flying Handicap, a 1000 metres. The Snake Gully Flying Handicap remained as the feature race of the club's November meeting for the next two years. In 1984 the club applied for TAB status for the 1985 meeting when the proposal was to conduct the first Snake Gully Cup over 1400 metres. The application was unsuccessful. This was the beginning of the Snake Gully Cup in its current format. In 1990 the club once again applied for TAB status for the Cup and were successful in securing this for the 1992 Cup. From that date the Cup has only been conducted on a Friday. The second day of the meet is called 'Hair of the Dog' and is a more family orientated race day.

Gundagai had a "Mud Muster", put on by the Nowra Mud, Sweat and Beers people, held on 2 April 2016, sponsored by Gundagai Shire Council. The event involved digging large mud pits throughout the highly significant and documented Aboriginal ceremonial ground on the North Gundagai Common, and filling the very large and deep holes with water. Hundreds of competitors wallowed through the pits and other obstacles.

The town's rugby league team competed in the Maher Cup.

The Turning Wave Festival, a music and cultural festival celebrating Irish and Celtic migration to Australia, was held in Gundagai up to 2011, but moved to Yass in 2012.

Council merger

In 2016, Gundagai and Cootamundra shires were forced to amalgamate into the Cootamundra–Gundagai Regional Council, against the wishes of the Mayor of Gundagai, Abb McAlister, and many of the town's businesspeople. Signs protesting against the amalgamation, sponsored by the Gundagai Council in Exile, were prominently displayed throughout Gundagai for several years. Five years on, the problems associated with the merger remained an issue. The demerger of the councils began in August 2022 and was expected to be completed in 2024, in time for the local government elections scheduled in that year.

References

Notes

External links

Niagara Cafe in Gundagai listed for sale