Historical Kangaroo Inn Ruins

Kangaroo Inn is on the corner of the roads from Beachport to Penola, at the small town of Kangaroo Inn. The road was originally built from local limestone and was a stopover from Mount Gambier to Robe. The spacing of the cookhouse purlins indicate the building had a shingle roof. Gillap Station manager, Keith Taylor, Kangaroo Inn Area School teachers and students rediscovered and restored a lined well near the ruins.

The inn would have been utilised by general travellers, surveyors, station owners, drovers and bullockies. Guichen Bay police journals record the inn as being one of the overnight stops for mounted constables escorting prisoners to the District Court sessions in Mount Gambier. The
diary of William Milne, Commissioner of Public Works, edited by Peter Rymill, remarks on the ‘good dinner served in excellent style’ at the inn, ‘with coffee afterwards’, when Milne, Goyder, the Surveyor General, and Hanson, together with their unnamed driver, were on a tour of inspection of the South East. There is mention of John McDonald and his ‘pleasant looking wife’ (Ann).

Chinese gold-seekers are likely to have passed through in 1862 and 1863. The Chinese migrants walked from the South Australian coast to the Victorian goldfields to avoid paying the 10 pound tax imposed on them.