South Coast NSW History Stories

In 1841 a flood opened up the bar at the entrance to Moruya River, enabling shipping (for a period) to proceed upstream, so Moruya village was surveyed in 1850 and gazetted in 1851...

Bendethera was not, is not a South Coast town - it's more of a locality, and we don't (yet) have a section to accommodate details about localities. So we've included it here because Bendethera is interesting and historically significant, being one of the earliest inland farming properties on the South Coast, providing a superb example of early European settlement of an isolated pastoral station, and it is ‘an outstanding example of a selector's holding established under NSW Land Acts after 1861’. Yet few people have ever visited it – probably for a good reason!...

Until World War II, holiday makers and fishermen provided the economic base to the town which in 1940 only had around 40 residents. Today the township has a permanent population of around 2,250, but the town’s economy still remains largely tourist- and fisherman-based...

The Bodalla Estate was owned by Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, an opportunistic and very successful Sydney businessman. Along with the Kameruka Estate near Candelo and the Ayrdale Estate near Wolumla, it was one of three particularly historically-important, very extensive, dairying properties on the NSW South Coast...

Bodalla was built on its current site in the 1870s as the township for the surrounding Bodalla Estate. The Bodalla Estate owned all the buildings in the town, excepting the school, up until they were sold in 1926 – mostly to the then-occupiers of the buildings...

The Narooma township on Wagonga Inlet was surveyed in 1883 and a year later a hand-powered punt was installed across the Inlet. This opened up road access from Narooma to Moruya and allowed a daily mail coach service to be established from Bega to Moruya via Narooma. Previously, almost all transport to Narooma had relied on sea connections...

Two villages, Tilba Tilba and Central Tilba, emerged adjacent to Gulaga (Mt Dromedary), a mountain sacred to Yuin Aboriginals. They primarily catered to the needs of local dairy farming families, but for about 50 years gold was also mined from Mt Dromedary...

Again, not strictly a town, but the story of a South Coast community - the community that is now Wallaga Lake Koori Village...
(WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Inlander readers are warned that this history includes the names of deceased persons.)

Bermagui is the closest town on the mainland to the edge of the continental shelf and this, together with favourable sea currents, provides outstanding fishing – both for professionals and amateurs. In the 1930s American author and big-game fisherman Zane Grey visited Bermagui on several occasions. He wrote about and filmed his experiences there – and in so doing ‘put Bermagui on the international map’...

When first developed in the late 1860s, Cobargo was known as ‘The Junction’. It serviced a substantial local farming community. The town declined in importance in the early 20th century as transport developed and it became easier for locals to travel to larger centres. Cobargo’s interesting and historic old streetscape was destroyed by a bushfire on 31st December 2019...

Quaama was probably a fairly typical country village, experiencing periods of growth and periods of decline. Certainly, businesses came and went. At various times Quaama had two small sawmills, several blacksmiths, a post office, a cheese factory, a coachbuilder, an accommodation house, a butcher and baker’s shop, a bootmaker and repairer, a haberdashery store, a barber, a wine shop, a co-op store (which was not successful), a general store, a rabbit freezer (which became possible when Quaama was connected to an electricity supply, just after World War II), a Catholic Church (demolished at the end of 1959) and an Anglican Church...

The site for Bega township was decided in 1851. It was originally envisaged to have a gently-flowing river (the Bega River) running diagonally through the centre of the town from the north-east to the south-west - but a major flood in 1851 in which 17 people drowned, and another in 1857, caused the town to be moved to its present location south of the river...

Tathra has had two overlapping eras in its modern history – first, providing a sea port to nearby Bega, and then emerging to become a popular holiday and tourist destination...

Bemboka is the amalgamation of three towns – Brown Mountain (where the first school was established in 1871), Colombo (which was surveyed in 1876, but re-gazetted as Bemboka in 1894) and a private subdivision named Lyttleton that was incorporated into Bemboka in 1923. Because it was situated half-way between Bega and Cooma, Bemboka became an important stopping-point after 1899 when a bridle trail down Brown Mountain was upgraded to take vehicular traffic. N.H. Hobbs Store then became a widely-known landmark in the town, catering to the needs of passing motorists...

The Kameruka Estate was a “transplanted segment of the English countryside; a largely self-contained community based on the English agricultural estate system”. The importance of the Estate to the NSW South Coast was that it provided the district with a large-scale commercial enterprise at a time when there was no other large industry in the area. This provided employment opportunities, which in turn attracted a significant population to the area...

The Candelo area was first settled by Europeans in the 1830s, but the village really developed in the 1860s at a crossroads of tracks connecting the Monaro with the coast. Dairying became the major industry in the area, with farmers supplying factories in Candelo and nearby Kameruka Estate...

The Ayrdale Estate, near Wolumla, was described as 'a textbook example of a well-run 19th – 20th century dairy farm'...

Wolumla’s current location was determined by the route of the Bega to Eden road. It was the junction of that road and the road connecting the coast to the Monaro. On a visit to the town in 1888, Sir Henry Parkes, the NSW Premier, promised that railway lines would be built from Bombala to Wolumla and from Bega to Eden, with their junction being at Wolumla. This raised optimism that Wolumla would become an important railway town and the name of a hotel was changed to the Railway Junction Hotel – the name that the town’s only remaining hotel still bears...

Merimbula was originally a private village that was established in 1855 by the Twofold Bay Pastoral Association. It became an important, regular port of call for vessels operated from Sydney by the Illawarra and South Coast Steam Navigation Company. These services continued until 1952. It is now a popular holiday resort town.

Pambula has been described as ‘a quiet town on a bend in the Princes Highway’. But that seriously undersells Pambula, if only because it’s a town with a still clearly-evident and interesting history...

It has long been imagined that Eden would become a major port town – but that major port has never materialised...

The visionary entreprenur Ben Boyd, who had acquired vast land holdings on the Monaro and in the Riverina district, purchased 640 acres of land on the shores of Twofold Bay in 1843. Here he started to develop a sizeable town, which he (unsurprisingly!) named after himself...until he became bankrupted. Remnants of his Boydtown have survived...

Oysters, fishing, tourism, bushfires have all had major impacts on Wonboyn, New South Wales' most southerly village...

Wyndham was a town built on dairying, timber and mining...serving an area severely affected by rabbit plagues and bushfires...

Whipstick was a small mining town about 5km east-south-east of Wyndham. It existed from the 1890s to the 1920s, and was essentially obliterated by severe bushfires that swept through in January 1929...

Towamba township was originally called Sturt. It has had a chequered history...

Seven Mile Beach south of Gerroa was used for horse racing and then motor car and motor cycle racing...

Location: 24 – 40 Collins Street, Kiama

A group of original, mainly utilitarian, buildings surrounding the Berry Railway Station has survived to now be something of a living legacy to this one-time important railway precinct...

Meroogal is a modest building when compared to many of the grand late 19th-century houses in Sydney, but it is quite grand compared to other residences in Nowra. It was built in 1886 as a home for Mrs Jessie Catherine Thorburn, a widow, and four of her unmarried daughters...

King House in Milton is an imposing two storey Georgian style Victorian residence. It is also a significant part of Wason Street’s impressive and valuable surviving historic streetscape...

It’s not particularly attractive because of the low-cost, unsympathetic additions that have been made over time to this modest house, but 56 North Street is historically important because it is one of only two remaining intact slab buildings in Ulladulla and is one of the town’s few remaining pre-1900 buildings...

This Federation Queen Anne style, former Teacher's Residence has local historical significance because it became part of Batemans Bay’s first public school...

Ocean View House is a good, intact example of simple interwar design and has significant historical associations with the interwar development of Batemans Bay as a tourist destination.

This 'unsophisticated, cheap and functional' boatshed and its adjacet wharf have heritage listing because they are iconic Batemans Bay structures and because they are the last remaining structures with links to the ‘original’ Clyde River waterfront in Batemans Bay township...

It was heritage listed, and parts of it (such as its towers) were considered to have ‘exceptional’ heritage significance, and it was an iconic ‘gateway’ to the town… but the original Batemans Bay Bridge was demolished. As happened with its predecessor (a motorized car ferry), the bridge was no longer capable of adequately handling the traffic flow – so it just had to go!...

This impressive building, designed by the Colonial Architect’s Office, was the second Post Office to be erected in Moruya. It is particularly important from a heritage point-of-view because it indicates the scale of essential services that the Government was prepared to provide to small rural NSW communities in the late 19th century, and it reflects just how important the Post Master’s position was considered to be in the town – a position that, unquestionably, demanded that he and his family be provided with a large, impressive residence!...

There are numerous architectural ‘gems’, both contemporary and traditional, to be found along the NSW South Coast. Glen Murcutt’s Magney House in Bingie Bingie, however, must surely be the most widely-acclaimed of them all...

The Bodalla Arms Hotel is mentioned extensively in the classic Australian book 'Gone Fishin' because its author, John O’Grady (perhaps better known as Nino Culotta), was a regular patron...

All Saints' Anglican Church in Bodalla is widely considered to be ‘one of the finest Churches in Australia’, ‘one of the choicest ecclesiastical structures out of Sydney’...