Yalgoo

Approaching Yalgoo from the north

Yalgoo, affectionately known as The Goo, feels like that one-horse town. There’s still plenty of evidence of its once thriving past, and the town has obviously realised that if it is to stay alive in the 21st century, it needs to keep its history alive too.

According to a plaque up at the look-out, five prospectors arrived here on horseback in 1892. Setting up camp beside a soak, they later got chatting to a shepherd, his Aboriginal wife and their children. As they yarned around the fire, the prospectors noticed that the stones the children were playing with were rich with gold. To their astonishment, the shepherd had no idea of their worth and happily showed the men where the children had found their ‘toys’. This was the start of the Yalgoo goldrush.

Today, on the walls of long-since boarded up buildings, and dotted on the edge of now vacant land around town there’s interpretive signs with historical facts and stories.

In between the derelict buildings there’s the local store stocking just the very basics, the pub, the oasis that is the Yalgoo caravan park, the old railway station now doubling as the frontage of the bush race track and the public toilets, the police station, the tiny primary school, and the pride of the town - the new footy oval.