A brief overview of Stuart Town...

Stuart Town (including Mookerawa Park) is a small service centre in the Central Western Slopes. Stuart Town is a small town of about 300 people which is situated in a hillside hollow, 34 km south-east of Wellington and 380 km north-west of Sydney. It is a small service centre to the surrounding area where sheep and cattle farming and orchards are the major enterprises. There is a Hotel and General Stores.

Stuart Town (like Mookerawa) sprang up when a gold rush was sparked in the 1870s, although it is claimed that the gold was first found in the 1840s by a shepherd who did not know what he had.

The settlement was originally known as Ironbarks, after the trees in the area. As such, it is the 'Ironbark' mentioned in 'Banjo' Paterson's well-known poem, 'The Man from Ironbark'.

It has been claimed that there were as many as 6000 persons working the local fields at the peak of activities, though this may well be an exaggeration. At any rate it is clear that they were of very mixed origins, including many Chinese. While the Europeans worked individually or in small groups the Chinese worked in units numbering in the hundreds which consisted of a large extended family and friends. They worked in shifts and built water races which ran for kilometres to supply water for washing. The old water races can be still seen when going up river from Mookerawa by boat.

Reef mining was also extensively conducted though water-logging defeated many, as the effort of clearing tunnels by bucket was so exhausting and slow. After its retrieval the ore was crushed in a stamper battery. The gold was retained on mercury-coated copper plates. By 1880 there were four hotels in existence, with another at Mookerawa. The first gold dredging in NSW was allegedly carried out here in 1899. Most mining had ceased in 1914 although some dredging continued until 1958. Reef and alluvial activities retrieved 4 metric tones of gold between 1875 and 1914. In the early days an ounce (28.3 g) of gold was worth three times an average weekly wage.

The riches attracted a number of bushrangers. Ben Hall and his associates robbed a wine shanty at Mookerawa at one point.

The well-known NSW Premier, Sir Robert Askin, lived in Stuart Town and attended the Stuart Town Public School when he was 5 years of age (around 1906). His mother's maiden name was Halliday. A bridge on the Mookerawa Road was opened and named after Sir Robert Askin.

Stuart Town's fair is held at Easter each year.
 

Many thanks to Robert Patterson for providing much of the content on this web site.