THE Bega Pioneers' Museum has countless files on people and places. This history comes from its Tarraganda file.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
IN THE 1900s Tarraganda had a bicycle track and sports recreation area which was very popular with Bega people.
Local BDN editor, Mr W A Smith, won a lovely silver trophy for cycling.
Koalas were plentiful in the early days and J E Blacker told of how lightning struck a tree at Eastwood and knocked a koala to the ground, and he immediately picked himself up and ran straight back up the tree.
Alex Munro lived on the foothills of Dr George Mountain and for many years he cut wood and carried it by dray and three horses to the Bega Butter Factory.
The Spindlers on the mountain cut wood and burned charcoal which they supplied to homes in Bega.
Other sporting activities in Tarraganda included the Bega Golf Club, Bega Rifle Club and the Tarraganda Cricket Club.
In the 1930-40 era the Tarraganda Cricket Club was very active.
A concrete half pitch was constructed on Sid Pearce's property and Stan Blacker would pick up players from the farms on Saturday morning with his truck and take them to where ever the game was to be that day.
An annual event was the New year's Day picnic held at the Tarraganda Bridge.
Many families would gather there with as many as 50 to 60 people, and picnic under then oak trees and the old bridge.
This was very popular during the 1930-40s.
It has been said that as money was not plentiful in those days, many children would swim in the river in their pyjamas on the picnic day, whereas they normally swam near the farms in their natural state.
In the same era regular house parties at William Dansey's home Knighton Farm were very popular with Tarraganda, and Bega people as well.
Mr Dansey held these parties to provide entertainment, and somewhere where the young people could meet and learn dancing.
They were often featured in the Bega District News, in a somewhat tongue-in-the cheek fashion by a correspondent who wrote under the pseudonym as Gadfly.
Tarraganda was, from the earliest days, a favourite spot for the Aboriginal people.
In the early days they lived in humpies of bark and bush timber, and when Tarraganda School opened, their children began to attend school.
Some were employed for farm work, but much of the digging of the drains and ringbarking of trees was done by Chinese.
Aboriginal families such as Pickalla, Bond, Brown, Mumbulla and Noble lived at Tarraganda and their gum leaf bands were very popular in Carp Stret.