Home > Yass

Yass is located about 300 kilometers south west of Sydney, on the Hume Highway. The Yass River, which is a tributary of the Murrumbidgee River, flows past the town. Yass is not far from Canberra.

Yass is a prominent area for raising sheep which produce very fine wool due to the soil and climatic conditions of the Yass area.

Railways at Yass

Yass was founded were the naiscent Sydney to Melbourne road crossed water in the form of the Yass River. Yass was later a battleground between the Town and the Sydney to Melbourne railway - because of the geography the railway wanted to bypass the town by a few kilometres. Naturally, the town wished the railway to pass closer or through it. A decade or two later, a light railway or tram was built to connect Yass Junction on the main line and Yass Town.

Yass was one of the sites proposed for the Federal Capital after 1901. Yass has the nearest railway station on the Sydney Melbourne railway to serve the national capital at Canberra.

When the uniform gauge railway between Sydney and Melbourne opened in 1961, the parliamentarian deserving most of the credit - William Charles Wentworth - was unable to leave parliament since his vote was needed in an almost hung parliament. Instead of catching the Inaugural train at Sydney, he had to catch it at Yass, where it made a special stop.