HISTORY OF MONGARLOWE

Mongarlowe is a small village in the Southern Tablelands of NSW, 13kms east of Braidwood and lies on the traditional lands of the Walbanga people, a group of the Yuin.
The village was a substantial mining settlement during the mid-19th century due to the New South Wales gold rush. Following other alluvial gold finds in the Braidwood district, prospectors were searching the Little River (now Mongarlowe River, a tributary of the Shoalhaven River), as early as December 1851 and there were miners working the Little River diggings by March 1852. The river was called the Little River, because another name for the Shoalhaven was the 'Big River'.
The Mongarlowe field had both alluvial working and hard-rock quartz reef mines. By 1870, quartz reefs were being mined. The reef mines lay to the east and to the north-east of the village, away from the river.

The village became the centre for several smaller mining camps spread widely throughout the area. By 1870, the village had two or three hotels, a large store, a schoolhouse, and a police station. The goldfields area had ten hotels, nine stores, three mills, and in 1868, a population of 1,332, of whom 350 were Chinese.
A bridge across the Mongarlowe River was opened at Mongarlowe in 1894. The bridge is a six-span timber trestle and beam bridge, with a timber deck. Prior to the bridge, pedestrians crossed the river using stepping stones.

In 1905, the village had a police station, hotel, three stores, public school, blacksmith's shop, three churches; a Chinese joss house, and private residences, and a population of about 700 Europeans and 23 Chinese. The Chinese temple (or 'joss house') and its burial ground stood on the left bank of the river, just downstream of the old ford. The village had a public school from 1863 to 1963.

The village's hotel was known as the Rising Sun Hotel. It was burned down in July 1907, in what was later found to be a case of arson. It was rebuilt but lost its licence soon afterward. It is now a private residence and one of the few remaining original public buildings in the village, the others being the old post office and schoolhouse. Another original building, the old lock-up, has been removed and reinstated at the Braidwood Museum.

Significant mining had all but ceased after 1905. There was a pump gold dredge working at the Half Moon Flat, from 1901 until late 1905. By 1917, the prospects of any future hard-rock gold mining at Mongarlowe were bleak. However, a bucket dredge operated at Half Moon, intermittently, between 1908 and 1915 and again between 1916 and 1922. During the Great Depression, there was a minor revival in gold mining and mining activity in the area continued sporadically up to at least the mid-1990s.

In January 1919, the village was severely affected by bushfire, losing its police station, both its Anglican and Catholic churches, several residences, a crushing battery and the Chinese temple (or 'joss house'. Another minor population boom occurred, during the Depression, when many returned to distil eucalyptus oil and search again for gold.

In 2006 the beautiful old wooden Mongarlowe Bridge needed major repairs and thankfully was restored rather than replaced by a concrete bridge and the village retained its grand entrance.