Gundagai Bakery: “Pies and Delicious Date Scones”

It is hard to go anywhere nowadays which doesn’t claim to have the biggest this, the oldest that, the longest other and so on and so forth. Gundagai is no exception and its claim to fame is that it has Australia’s oldest continually operating bakery – the Historic Gundagai Bakehouse, more commonly referred to as the Gundagai Bakery.

A bakery was established on this town centre site in 1864 by German immigrant, William Bibo, and continued in operation under a number of owners and lessee’s until it was threatened with closure in 1976.

Rather than see the bakery close local residents rallied and fifty of them became shareholders in Gundagai Industries Pty Limited which purchased the premises and business in the same year. The business was subsequently leased to Greg Crane until 1996 when the present baker, John Catling, took on the business lease.

After a couple of failed attempts to eat at the Gundagai Bakery I finally found it open on a recent visit to the town. I should add that my earlier attempts were at around 6am while en route between Canberra and Adelaide, though they do claim to open at 6am.

The offering is fairly rustic, and its cakes, slices, apple pies, cream buns, meat pies, sausage rolls, etc are not of the delicate nature found in trendy city establishments.

The bakery wins awards for the taste of its meats pies and not their look.

While I didn’t sample the pies I did have a couple of absolutely delicious date scones. I have found, in recent years, that a decent scone is getting very hard to find in Australia – so when I get one I am particularly pleased and indeed excited.

My fear that the coffee might be lacking in finesse proved wrong and that too was delicious.

All in all, great country cooking and well worth the short detour into the town centre from the highway, even if you are just passing by, which of course you should not do, given other things to be seen in Gundagai and the locale.

As an added bonus, being able to come here for a decent coffee means that I can avoid what has got to be one of the world’s worst McDonalds, along the main highway, for my regular Gundagai coffee fix.

Opening Hours

Mon-Sat 6am(ish!)-4pm (Sat opening possibly 8.30am), Sun 8.30am-2.30pm

Address: 184 Sheridan St

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