St George Tavern, the solitary hotel in Jugiong

 

Jugiong
Historic town on the Hume Highway
Located 344 km south-west of Sydney via the Hume Highway, Jugiong is known to generations of drivers as a long, straight stretch of road which invited the unwary to speed only to ensure that they were caught exceeding the speed limit. It was a classic speed trap. A straight stretch of road with an impressive row of poplar trees (ideal for the police to hide behind) and a town comprising of little more than a church, a pub and a service station.

All this has disappeared. The town has been by-passed. All that is left is an interesting and historic township which can trace its origins back to the early 1820s when Henry O'Brien, following the route taken by the explorers Hume and Hovell, took up the Jugiong run.

The town grew around the Sir George Tavern which became an important coaching stop. Inevitably, as gold was found in the area, the long and lonely roads between Jugiong and Yass (in the north) and Gundagai (in the south) became ideal locations for holdups. On November 1864 the deadly combination of Johnny Gilbert, Ben Hall and John Dunn held up a mail coach between Gundagai and Jugiong and in the ensuing melee shot and killed the 32 year-old Edmund Parry. This was only 5km from Jugiong.

The death of Parry was the culmination of a very busy day for Hall and his gang. By the time the mail coach had arrived they had held up nearly 60 people in a single day - literally everyone who was travelling along the road.

When the bushrangers tried to hold up the mail coach both Parry and Inspector O'Neil, who were riding as armed escorts, returned fire. Parry was killed. O'Neil survived because he ran out of bullets and had to surrender.

Johnny Gilbert was killed by police in 1865 and is buried at Binalong.

Parry's gravestone in the Gundagai cemetery records 'Edmund Parry, Sergeant of the N.S.W. Police, who lost his life in the execution of his duty whilst courageously endeavouring to capture the bushranger Gilbert by whom he was shot dead near Jugiong.'

Jugiong has never really grown. Today it has a population of less than 200 people and, at last, the trucks which run up and down the Hume Highway, no longer pass down the Main Street.

A footnote: The cricketer Richie Benaud started his schooling at Jugiong in 1935.

Things to see:  

Sir George Tavern
The most prominent building in Jugiong is the distinctive Sir George Tavern which stands at the end of the main street. An Irish settler, John Philip Sheahan, built the first Sir George Tavern on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River in 1845 but it was washed away in the floods of 1852. Undeterred by this setback Sheahan decided to build something which would last forever. He brought stonemasons from Ireland and built the current Sir George Tavern which opened for business a few years later. It is a monument to permanence with the walls being over 500cm thick. That permanence extends to the family. Today the Sheahan family still run the pub making it the oldest family-run hotel in Australia.

 

Christ Church of England
The church was designed by Edmund Blacket (he designed the main quadrangle of Sydney University) in 1872. It was built in 1872-73 with the sanctuary being added in 1895 and the west porch in 1970. Blacket produced plans for a local stone Early English Church. It was extraordinarily plain with no mouldings. This simplicity has been retained.

 

St John the Evangelist Catholic Church
Built between 1858-60 at cost of £515 it is a comment on the intense Irish-ness of the Jugiong area that the church had been totally paid for by donations by the time the first mass was held in 1860.

 

Monument to Sergeant Parry
There is a monument to Sergeant Parry five km south of Jugiong on the right hand side of the road. It is close to the spot where the actual gun battle took place.

 

 

 

 

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Jugiong