Sandy Hollow is a small rural town in

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia in

Muswellbrook Shire Muswellbrook Shire is a local government area in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales, Australia. The Shire is situated adjacent to the New England Highway and the Hunter railway line. Muswellbrook Shire was established on 1 July 1979 f ...

. The town is located on the

Golden Highway Golden Highway (also known as Mitchells Line of Road at its eastern end) is a highway, located in the Hunter and Orana regions of New South Wales, Australia. It runs eastwards from Dubbo towards Newcastle on the coast, allowing road transpo ...

in the far west of the Upper

Hunter Valley The Hunter Region, also commonly known as the Hunter Valley, Newcastle Region, or simply Hunter, spans the region in northern New South Wales, Australia, extending from approximately to north of Sydney. It contains the Hunter River and its ...

, about 260 km north of

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

. It is located around halfway between Denman and Merriwa, 1 km west of the intersection of the Golden Highway and the Bylong Valley Way. It is the junction point of the Merriwa and Sandy Hollow-Ulan railway lines, and a railway station was open between 1917 and 1973. Services currently provided include a hotel, caravan park with pool, a service station and combined post office agency which sells eat in and takeaway meals. It also has a community hall, a small public school, sculpture surrounded coffee house and emporium selling gift ware. It is situated close to the Goulburn River and the nearby Giants Creek flows close to the town.

History

The town began as a traveller's campsite on the junction of the Goulburn River Valley and Halls Creek. A route for a railway line between Maryvale and Sandy Hollow was surveyed in 1918. Work began in 1941, stopped during WWII, resumed in 1946 but was ceased in 1950. A coal mine was opened in Ulan in 1977, work was completed on a line to transport coal to Newcastle in 1982. Oil bearing shale was trucked from a mine at Baerami Creek to refining retorts at Sandy Hollow in the 1940s but was closed after WWII as uneconomical.

Notable people

* Stephen Gageler High Court justice since 2012, Chief Justice of the High Court since 2023.

References

Suburbs of Muswellbrook Shire Towns in the Hunter Region {{MuswellbrookShire-geo-stub