You could say Jamberoo is in my blood. My family has lived here for eight generations, and while others have documented its history in great detail, I’ve recently joined the fray for a very specific reason: a book I’ve been commissioned to write about a “scandal” that rocked the village in 1910. Let’s just say the past has been more gripping than I ever expected, and I am absolutely loving the research.
With help from local legends Dr. Tony Gilmour and Sue Eggins at the Kiama District Historical Society, I’ve been digging through dusty records, unexpected side stories, and the odd political stoush that feels… well, oddly familiar.
Some people take a gap year to find themselves in Europe. I took a few weeks and found a cast of clergy, schoolteachers, butter makers, ambitious aldermen, and a council so divided they once presented the mayor with a box of boxing gloves. Yes, literally. A political stunt so deliciously dramatic, you almost expect it to show up in a Netflix period drama. The gloves were delivered to the council chambers in July 1890 at the height of the campaign to separate Kiama Town from the rural wards, and the Council’s shock was so great they attempted (and failed) to prosecute the glove sender. Some things, it seems, haven’t changed.
Turns out, council being broke isn’t exactly a modern innovation. Back in the 1880s, Kiama Council found itself mortgaged to the bank, struggling under the weight of a tramway project that was supposed to pay for itself, and spectacularly didn’t. By 1890, they were embroiled in financial drama, territorial separation movements, and public meetings where frustration boiled over into performance art (cue the boxing gloves). It’s oddly comforting to know that while the potholes and politics may change, the budget headaches remain a timeless local tradition.
Jamberoo itself, though, was already galloping along by the mid-1800s. By 1836 it boasted its own flour and timber mill (powered by waterwheel), a brewery growing its own hops, and blacksmiths pounding out the future. Church life was thriving, with four churches and a similar amount of schools at one point, and education became a passion project. By 1890 Jamberoo boasted a population of 2,235 people
Little slab schools popped up in barns, old inns, and weatherboard buildings, giving rise to figures like William Cullen, who started school at Jerrara and went on to become Chief Justice of New South Wales. He was so precociously brilliant that at just 12 years old, the school inspector recommended he be offered a job as a pupil teacher. It’s probably the only time in history a careers advisor looked at a Year 6 kid and said, “Right then, how about you teach the class?”
Then came the butter boom.
In 1884, the Pioneer Factory opened near Spring Creek—the first of its kind in Australia. Two more factories followed in Jamberoo alone, at Waughope and Woodstock. Suddenly, the quiet valley was home to piggeries, Danish separators, milk cans hand-fashioned by the local tinsmith, and grand dinners with turkeys, fowls and suckling pigs to honour the men who made it all happen. The whole region was churning with energy (and dairy), as farmers abandoned their home churns for cooperative factories and the promise of a better price.
But nothing upended daily life more than the Illawarra Railway. When it opened in 1887, quietly, under pouring rain, local papers nicknamed the new Kiama ( now Bombo) station “The Station at the Graveyard.” Still, the transformation was immediate. Milk, butter, and even newspapers began moving by train. Kiama’s coastal shipping trade faded, and the daily arrival of Sydney papers left the local press scrambling.
As I keep uncovering these stories, I’m struck by how little has really changed. People back then were organisers, agitators, dreamers, and doers. They planted trees before Arbor Day existed, debated public spending over tea meetings, and threw their hearts (and sometimes their gloves) into local politics.
So yes, I’ve lived in Jamberoo. But not just the one you drive through. I’ve walked her muddy streets in the 1850s, seen her butter factories boom in the 1880s, and shaken my head in fond disbelief at an 1890 council session where someone thought boxing gloves might get their point across.
And I am loving every minute of it.
Much of this delightful detour through Jamberoo’s past has been made possible thanks to W.A. Bayley, whose 1959 book Blue Haven: History of Kiama Municipality remains a treasure trove of stories, facts, and fabulous detail. It’s not just a source, it’s a time capsule, capturing both the spirit of the district and the language of its era. Like many works of its time, it defaults to the male gender throughout, with little thought for neutral language, but it still offers a vivid, passionate account of a community in motion.
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