Mick Dal Santo wraps their meat in butchers paper, newspaper, ties the bundle with string and passes it through a wire gauze window. "The oldies love it," he said. Coaches of senior citizens have pulled over just to watch him snap off the string the way they remember it was always done.

"My supplier goes to butchers all over NSW and says I'm the only one that still bundles up the meat in paper and string," the Queanbeyan-born butcher said.

"Problem is the big paper from Canberra turned into a small one. I was going to ring up and ask why The Canberra Times is smaller," Mr Dal Santo said, after this broadsheet became a compact in July.

Bush poets often gather at Binalong. There's a festival for them over the weekend, and the NSW bush poetry and yarn spinning championships in early September. Poets and story tellers need go no further than Binalong Butchery for inspiration, to Mick Dal Santo and a predecessor, 94-year-old Merv Spencer.

For a bush butcher a ready yarn is as handy as a sharp knife. Like this one:

"Two young blokes came in here one day and asked me to take their photo holding snags," Mr Dal Santo said. "I said I never saw that before, they said, 'What, you want us in the raw?'"

Naked except for sausages and a grin, they stood in front of the main street shop. Not a soul saw them, except their butcher.

Mr Spencer owned the shop with his brother Charlie for many years, retired, and Charlie, who is now deceased, sold it to Mr Dal Santo 23 years ago when he moved from Kambah to Binalong after marrying local woman Lillian Turton.

Mrs Dal Santo said people no longer bought meat in bulk, and wanted something they could microwave. "Meat is so dear and a lot of people go for fish or chicken. Sausages are a lifesaver."

Mr Spencer worked in the peak of the bulk meat buying. "I rode 21 miles to Harden on my horse to bring stock here to slaughter," he said. "I was a slaughterman too. The only way out of Binalong back then was on a horse or a train. I rode out to Boorowa to bring back 300 whethers. Only me and one dog," he said.

The Spencers sprinkled sawdust on the floor to catch the fat, mixed good meat with flour, yam seasoning and salt for their sausages and made eyes at all the girls. "It was a bit of fun," he said.

Yellow sticky notes with phone numbers and orders adorn a wall, including from a Goulburn freight train driver who calls ahead and collects his sausages at the railway station. A certificate from the Royal Goondah Yacht Club hangs from another wall. Goondah is a whistle stop further along the railway line, and the certificate, a fundraiser for CareFlight Helicopter Service, cost $10.

The gauze wire door into the shop has a second, lower section, and in the space between, loose coins collect for Binalong Pre-School.