Old Wares building in main street of Henty

 

Henty (including Cookardinia, Yerong Creek and Pleasant Hills)
Medium-sized rural service centre.
Henty is a typical Australian rural service centre. Located 539 km south-west of Sydney via the Hume and Sturt Highways (it is on the Olympic Highway) and halfway between Wagga Wagga and Albury, the town's economy is driven by the surrounding grain and sheep agriculture. It has a population of around 1700. To explore the town you need to cross the railway line from the Olympic Highway which now diverts traffic around the town centre.

Henty describes itself as the 'Home of the Header' because, in 1914, a local farmer named Headlie Taylor invented the header harvester which revolutionised the grain industry worldwide when it became commercially available in 1916.

The Headlie Taylor Header Memorial which includes one of Taylor's original machines is located in Henty Park, off Allen St (clearly signposted through town) and the Henty Machinery Field Day is held each September.

 

A memorial stone on the site where bushranger 'Mad Dog' Morgan shot Sergeant Smyth in September 1864

 

Henty is also famous for its connections with the bushranger Dan 'Mad Dog' Morgan. Exactly 2 km west of town on Pleasant Hills Rd (the Lockhart road) is a memorial stone on the site where Morgan shot Sergeant Thomas Smyth in September 1864.

The new plaque was erected by the NSW Police Service and reads 'A memorial to Senior Sergeant Thomas Smyth, aged 29. A member of the NSW Police Force shot by bushranger Dan Morgan in the surrounding hills on 4 September 1864. Senior Sergeant Smyth received a gunshot wound to his left shoulder and convalesced at the Imperial Hotel, Albury until 29 September 1864 where he haemorrhaged as a result of the gunshot wound and died. He is buried in an unmarked grave in the Albury cemetery. Dan Morgan was a murderer with a £1000 price on his head. Senior Sergeant Smyth gave his life while in the pursuit of Morgan who although a tourist attraction these days put fear in the people of the district in the 1860s.'

There is a more spectacular version on a billboard nearby but it is inaccurate in its account of events.

Morgan had committed his second and third murders just a few months before he arrived in the Henty area. After the murders, and an outcry from the press, the reward for Morgan's capture was raised to £1000 and parties of special police were sent to track and capture him.

Senior Sergeant Smyth was leading one of the parties but Morgan outwitted them (he claimed he had watched the campsite for some time) and fired into Smyth's tent fatally wounding the policeman.

The first pastoral holding in the area was known as 'Dudal Cooma', taken up in 1866 by the Reighlan brothers. From Smyth's memorial stone you can see Doodle Cooma Swamp (2000 ha) a breeding area for waterbirds.

When the railway arrived in 1880 the stop was called Dudal Cooma. However, it led to confusion with the town of Cooma in the Monaro district. The name was changed to Henty in 1891. It was the name of a family of merchants and pastoralists who had been involved in the development of Victoria and Launceston. Edward Henty had leased Round Hill station north of Gerogery (south of Henty) in the early 1860s.

Things to see:  

1. Cookardinia
11 km east of town on the road to Cookardinia you can see the old chock-and-log 'Buckaringa' woolshed and, in Cookardinia itself, the ruins of the Squatter's Arms Inn, built in 1848. The latter featured in the filming of Mad Dog Morgan.

 

2. Yerong Creek
The establishment of the town began with the arrival of the railway fettlers in the late 1870s. It was originally known as Yerong but when the railway arrived the platform bore the sign 'Yerong Creek' and it soon asserted its authority. The two-storey hotel (c.1910) is an attractive old building which is still operational and the school features a mural by Gerry Willis.

The Bunkhouse Gallery and Panorama Farm at Yerong Creek features a mural 3 m high and 24 m in circumference depicting an early Australian farm scene. Painted by Gerry Willis it combines sharp pictorial realism with physical objects (parts of fences and sheds etc). The gallery is open every day but Saturday, tel: (02) 6920 3723.

 

Hanericka Farm Stay
Hanericka is the nucleus of a 5350 acre (2140 ha) fully operational farm. It is an ideal farmstay holiday destination. Being a mixed farm visitors have an opportunity to see how a working farm deals with cropping, sheep and both dairy and beef cattle. There are also alpacas, deer, pigs, pet lambs and chickens to be fed and the major activities include horse riding, swimming, tennis, bushwalking, yabbying and barbecues. The original homestead is 110 years old but guests are housed in pleasant modern accommodation with ensuites.

 

3. Pleasant Hills
34 km west of Henty is the small village of Pleasant Hills (proclaimed in 1892). The township has won awards for the Lutheran Cemetery where the headstones are in German, the flora of the Esplanade in the centre of the village, and the public hall (1912). Made of local pine it features a mural, memorabilia and a barbecue site (the key is available from the store/post office). There is also a wattle-and-daub Lutheran Church built in 1888 and still in use today. Nearby is an old dam and some abandoned mine shafts from the goldmining days.

 

 

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Henty