Bluebird Cafe owners Rajan Gurung and Raj Acharya happily turn the heat up on their spacious, popular enterprise in Goulburn which is now opening seven days a week. Photo: John Thistleton.
Huge volumes of Easter holiday traffic offset penalty rates in the cafes and fast food eateries at South Goulburn’s service centre. In the middle of the town, however, many of the cafes cut back their opening hours to avoid the high running costs and reduced volumes of trade.
An exception was the Bluebird Cafe. Owners Rajan Gurung and Raj Acharya enjoyed good trading, most especially on Easter Monday. After buying the Bluebird in 2024 they had contemplated opening a fine-dining restaurant, but are still assessing the potential of night-time patronage before making such a move.
For many years Goulburn craved a major development instead of relying on its homegrown hospitality industry to drive prosperity.
Political and business leaders long hankered for a major manufacturer or government department bursting at the seems with public servants to replace all those whittled away through years of economic rationalism.
In the late 1980s Goulburn’s movers and shakers latched onto wild ideas about a very fast train (VFT) and Sydney’s second airport at Gundary Plains south of the city. These fantastic projects would, they reasoned, safeguard businesses from the inevitable downturn when the Hume Highway bypass diverted traffic away from the main street.
Businessman Bill Dryburgh bolstered the optimism with his proposed $40 million ‘Goulburn Junction’. Aimed at bringing traffic off the future Hume Highway bypass it would have stood as a bright satellite at South Goulburn.
Revolving around tourist coaches and truck stops, 45 separate tenancies would offer travellers freshly-cooked fast food, restaurants, a tavern and speciality shops.
As much as an international airport at Gundary Plains fired up imaginations, it died a natural death. Federal member John Sharp, a former Transport and Regional Development Minister at the time, said being so far from Sydney the concept would never fly.
State and federal politicians loved the idea of a VFT. They still do.
In 1988 a national company was reportedly inquiring after a four-hectare site to manufacture concrete sleepers for the much heralded train.
In a lather of enthusiasm the city council appointed a task force to ensure the city reaped as many benefits from the overall fast train project including accommodation for a 2000-strong construction workforce and a major station on the route.
Today, dreams of the “next-big-thing” for Goulburn have cooled. Most folk would just like a good restaurant with white tablecloths and maybe a main street akin to the one we had in 1988. The highway delivered diners day and night to our food-lined boulevard called Auburn Street.
Wild ideas for Goulburn were captured and recorded in the Goulburn Post daily newspapers from May and June, 1988, (among the last newspapers to be printed in the city). Goulburn Junction was the closest project of them all to reality. Photo: John Thistleton
To add to the menu, brothers Chris, Paul and Phillip Stamatellis and their uncle Dennis opened a new eatery, Danny’s Brasserie in 1988, offering daily fresh seafood.
Paul observed at the time Goulburn had a lot of cafes, a few restaurants, but nothing like the brasserie the brothers were operating.
“We don’t have hamburgers or chiko rolls but we are not a formal restaurant either, ” he had said.
As well, in 1988 the Fireside Inn restaurant with its crisp white linen tablecloths and extensive wine list was promoting open log fires, cocktail bar, international a-la-carte cuisine, two-course business lunches for $11 and a three-course lunch from $13.
Over the June long weekend in 1988 the Goulburn Post reported cafes were in overdrive thanks to the snow traffic coming through town. The Paragon Cafe, Radnor Cafe and Secrets Restaurant were enjoying a healthy feast of brisk turnover. The Pizza Hut staff said the snow traffic and people coming home after a weekend away kept them busy too.
After the bypass opened in December 1992, the restaurants struggled, the cafes either closed or limped on with a gradual winding down of staff and turnover.
Some of that buzz of people and commerce now missing in Belmore Park, along the footpaths and inside the main street’s eateries can be found today at South Goulburn.
Grit Cafe, Trappers Bakery, Mercure restaurant and hotel, Kebab Express, Ravi’s Curry in a Hurry, and the franchise outlets Subway, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds teem with people. Add to that the Big Merino and its tourist shop, Mercure Hotel, Trappers Bakehouse Motel, Shell service station and Australia’s biggest charging station for electric vehicles, the place is as vibrant as ever.
The only thing missing from Bill Dryburgh’s 1988 vision of South Goulburn is a strategy to bring more of the passing traffic into the heart of Goulburn, instead of cars returning to the highway and escaping to destinations elsewhere.
Goulburn’s city centre offers travellers with children a wonderful play area in Belmore Park, cafes, shops and toilets, although the park’s loos are long overdue for repairs and upgrading.
