A tiny town fighting to stay alive!
Some years ago, the Sydney Morning Herald's Traveller reported that Ivanhoe, NSW, Australia was the "town that would not give up". We are not so sure that the SMH's optimism was justified, for during our visit, the town was depressingly quiet. The population is less than 200 and there seem to be few visitors, and frankly, not that many passing through. Ivanhoe, named after Sir Walter Scott's novel, was proclaimed as a town in 1890 but before then, the Wangaibon people had long been displaced by pastoral leases. The town grew when the railway came, 1925, overtaking nearby Booligal and Mossgiel to the south, but it declined when rail travel gave way to personal transport, the major east-west highways passing very wide of Ivanhoe. That decline seems to be persistent.
What's in Town?
Mid-winter may not be peak season in Ivanhoe, but there was almost nothing open, and not much to open anyway, in the town. The swimming pool was empty and locked up. The exceptions were a General Store, and, across the road, the Ivanhoe RSL Club which seemed to provide the only life and certainly the only meals in town. We exhausted what we wanted from the menu in two nights. A cafe called La Bouche once got good reviews on social media, but we found it to be now nothing more than a vending machine (which did get serviced!). Breakfast and lunch are your own responsibilty. The General Store carried the barest of necessities, and serviced a caravan park.
The Railway
If Ivanhoe ever had glory days, they are long past. Ivanhoe Station is scantly blessed by only one passenger train connecting Sydney with Broken Hill every week, each way. The three carriage train, the Outback XPlorer, we saw on a Tuesday was reasonably well patronised, but everyone was going to Broken Hill. During its ten minute stop at Ivanhoe, everyone got out to stretch their legs, including the crew, but only one passenger actually got off with his luggage. He seemed confused as to whether he should get off here or at Menindee, and in the end, we gave him a lift into town, where we left him at the RSL Club. The railway station was placed 3km south of town, no doubt to the consternation of the locals, and it then became inaccessible during periods of rain! A separate village, "Railtown" which sprang up near the station, was later to become a Correctional Centre, now discontinued.