Yackandandah, Victoria

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Yackandandah (36°18′S 146°50′E) is a small town in northeast Victoria, Australia. It is near the industrial towns of Wodonga and Albury, and is close to the tourist town of Beechworth. It is a former gold mining centre, and now in an area of dairy farming and forestry. It is affectionally known as 'Yack'.

A railway once linked Yackandandah to Beechworth opening in 1891. The route out to Woorragee and then onto Yackandandah was steep. Trains descending the last gradient into Yackandandah would halt,(near the now Yackandandah turnoff, from the Beechworth-Wodonga Road) the guard would apply hand-brakes to carriages and wagons. The last train on the Yackandandah-Beechworth line was in July 1954. (Larsen, MayDay Hills) Though the line was torn up, many sections of the original right of way are visible from the roadway between Beechworth and Yack.

Used for the filming of the 2003 film, Strange Bedfellows, (starring Michael Caton and Paul Hogan), Yackandandah is also home to the annual Yackandandah Folk Festival attracting local, Australian and international artists in the folk genre to perform. Like its larger neighbour, Yackandandah promotes itself as a tourist destination on the basis of its gold mining history, and features a period streetscape and an increasing number of antique shops and the like to cater for them.

History Books on the area

O'Brien, Antony. Shenanigans on the Ovens goldfield: The 1859 election, Artillery Publishing, Hartwell, 2005.
Larsen, Wal. The Mayday Hills Railway, Wal Larsen, Bright, 1976.