Jamberoo - Culture and History

A vivid impression of the original landscape has been left by a local mill manager's daughter who married T.H. Huxley, one of the most and influential scientists of the 19th century. Huxley reputedly visited Jamberoo in the 1840s:

'From Wollongong to Jamberoo, the road was a mere day track through a forest of tropical foliage; gum trees 200 [feet] or more in height, gigantic india-rubber trees with broad shining green leaves, lofty cabbage palms, and many other kinds of tree towered above us, so that their tops made a twilight canopy, unpenetrable to the sunlight, save for an infrequent clearing in the forest made by the settler's axe. Huge lianas, some as thick as a man's arm, hung down snakelike from the trees.'

The first inroads were made by cedar-getters who took the wood to Kiama for shipment to Sydney. The clearing of the land enabled the establishment of grazing runs and the area was settled in the 1820s. The township, which developed on the private land of the Hyam Estate, was described as a 'thriving hustling village' in 1836. The first denominational school was established at the Roman Catholic Church in 1839.

Although there has been considerable development on the outskirts of the town, time seems to have stood still in Jamberoo. This historic and rather English feel is accentuated by the dry stone walls which separate some of the farms in the area. These stone fences were erected from the 1850s by one man, Thomas Newing of Kent, who brought the craft with him from England and took it with him when he died in 1927.

As transportation to Sydney improved, dairying became central to the life in Jamberoo and the prosperity it brought is apparent in the substantial buildings that were erected.