Josh Daley, Sue Bonat and Louise Hartwig at Gundagai Hungry Jack’s.
Gundagai’s Hungry Jack’s restaurant will close its doors this Friday at 5:00pm after 17 years serving the famous town and thousands upon thousands of Hungry, Hume Highway ‘hitchhikers’, travellers and families.
The fast food restaurant has given a start to many young people over the years as well as many older adults who have enjoyed being employed at the site, which is part of a precinct that also encompasses a service station and attached truck stop and through the next roundabout, the Golden Arches of their competition.
The Restaurant is known for immersing itself in the community through sponsorship work with local schools, sporting clubs, community events and campaigns. In particular the RUOK mental health question which has become synonymous with suicide in Australia.
The Dunns Road Bushfires of 2019/2020 which burned large swathes land across the states of Victoria and NSW brought Hungry Jack’s to the fore for those taking time from the front, or rehabilitating themselves. The Dunns Road fire started in a private pine plantation near Ellerslie Nature Reserve, near Adelong, on 31st December 2019 and travelled in a southwesterly direction, threatening the townships of Batlow and Tumbarumba, and burning out an area of 333,940 hectares in total. Catastrophic fire weather on the 4th January resulted in secondary fronts moving in a northeasterly direction, and the fire merged with the Green Valley fire south of Tumbarumba on the 11 January, and along with the East Ournie Creek fire, became a 600 000 hectare megafire.
Firefighters and support staff were able to get a free meal at Hungry Jack’s at Gundagai due to the generosity of the store for weeks on end.
Hungry Jack’s Gundagai has been an institution in the river town for so many years, it will be strange to come off the Highway and not be able to stop at the restaurant for some of their iconic items including the Whopper which put the global business on the map, with the slogan, ‘the burgers are better at Hungry Jack’s’. At Hungry Jack’s in Gundagai, the burgers really were better. They looked the way they should have and they tasted the way we remembered them.
As the final closing time looms, some stock may become low. It is asked that the public be understanding during this time.
Although soon to be sorely missed we wish all of the staff and owners the best in their future endeavours.
