Photo: NSWrail.net
The otherwise insignificant railway station at Gerogery, in the Riverina district of New South Wales, enjoyed its solitary day of fame on 6th September 1981 when the first test run of NSW Government Railways’ XPT Train set a new Australian speed record of 183km/h a short way from the station down the main southern (Sydney to Albury) railway line.
Gerogery General Store
The town of Gerogery is on land originally inhabited by the Wiradjuri people. In English, the place name is pronounced Jer-rodge-er-rree; however, in Indigenous language it could have been a repeated "Jerro-Jerro ee". Local understanding is the place is named after the Wiradjuri word for magpies, plentiful in the locality. In the 1960s Aboriginal stone tools were found a couple of kilometres north-west of the township.
The arrival of European settlers meant that trees were extensively cleared and wheat planted, along with sheep and cattle grazed. Gerogery was at the easternmost extent of nineteenth-century German immigration up the Murray River from South Australia. In the early 1870s a German Lutheran School opened to the west of Gerogery township and closed in 1968. A one-teacher government school was set up close to the railway line in 1884, as part of the general plan by the New South Wales government to stem the spread of religious-based education that was springing up for the poor of the colony. Originally the Gerogery Railway Station Public School, its name was changed in 1968. Today Gerogery is a vibrant village at the base of Table Top Mountain.
"Morgan's Place", Walla Walla
During the 1860s bushranger Mad Dan Morgan held up Sam Watson at Gerogery East. His hideout, "Morgan's Place" is located in the Yambla Range, and was used in between holdups around Tumbarumba, Kyeamba, and as a place to take refuge after the alleged killing of several police and a Wagga Wagga judge. The bushranger was the subject of the film, Mad Dog Morgan, starring Dennis Hopper.
The station master's residence
Gerogery Post Office opened on 15 April 1875. Being 32 km from Albury, and on a stock route, the Gerogery Pub attracted Sunday clientele from Albury, who were able to use a statutory loophole to evade Sunday closing and order an alcoholic drink. Not far from Gerogery on the way to Walla Walla is a peak of rocks which was used as a meeting place and lookout to help break the shearers' strike of 1891.
The coming of the Sydney Great Southern Railway in 1880 made Gerogery the temporary terminus while building proceeded on to Albury. This railway resulted in moving the centre of population from an original settlement (now Gerogery West) to the railway line. The station master's residence is a beautiful two-story house listed by the National Trust. The station building, goods shed and station master’s house were constructed in the early 1880’s and are now listed by the National Trust.
Prosperity brought by the Korean War wool boom saw the expansion of Gerogery township in the 1950s, with a few general stores, but this had contracted to just one combined post office store by the late 1960s. In 1974 Gerogery was included in the area to be developed as part of a proposed greater Albury-Wodonga region, proposed by the Whitlam Government as part of its national decentralisation program, but these plans were dismantled by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's successor, Malcolm Fraser. By the end of the twentieth century increased use of the car meant that Gerogery had become a dormitory suburb of Albury.
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