Gundaroo
Gundaroo's main street is much less grand than Braidwood's,
but equally historic. Somehow, it's easier to imagine it as a dusty road where
Cobb & Co. pulled up at the coaching inn. The National Trust has defined the
village as being of historic significance and it has been classified as an Urban
Conservation Area. Building styles and materials range from slab huts and wattle
and daub to stone and locally fired brick.
Gundaroo also has a town common bordering the village on the
eastern side. The common is one of the few remaining functioning town commons in
existence and provides an area for villagers to graze cattle.
There are rumours of a wild past in Gundaroo. Banjo Patterson
penned a verse, The Gundaroo Bullock, which painted the town in a particularly
criminal light:
...Far away by Grabben Cullen,
where the Murrumbidgee flows,
There's a block of broken country-side where
no one ever goes;
For the banks have gripped the squatters,
and the free selectors too,
And their stock are always stolen by the men of Gundaroo…
In more recent times, a certain raciness has been attached to Gundaroo
watering holes. The Gundaroo Colonial Inn, aka Matt Crowe's Wine Bar, has been
in continuous operation since 1872. The adjective most commonly attached to it
seems to be ‘notorious'.
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A favourite meeting place of locals, it
featured heavily in the ‘Prickle Farmer' ABC radio series from the late Mike Hayes.
The wine bar is clearly still a drawcard for residents. As a local historian
writes: “Recent years have seen an upsurge in interest in the Village from
people who work in Canberra but want to enjoy a more rural lifestyle, keep a few
animals, become part of a community, and enhance the turn-over of Crowes' Wine
Bar.”
The much more upmarket Royal Hotel wasn't always so. For a long period in its
life, as the ‘Gundaroo Pub', it catered for busloads of raucous visitors doing
‘Aussie drinking tours'. Locals tell of several dozen Japanese tourists
enthusiastically singing “Crick go the shears boys, crick, crick, crick”.
Special duty-free souvenir stores were set up for one night only, to lighten the
wallets of the visitors while they were in a particularly mellow state of mind.
(Maybe Banjo was right!)
Next: Murrumbateman >
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