South Coast NSW History Stories

Nowra became the principal town on the Shoalhaven River after floods in 1870 severely affected nearby Terrara which had been developing into a sizeable town...

Huskisson was originally planned to be the port for wool exports from the Southern Tablelands and the Goulburn Plains but developed as a shipbuilding and timber town before becoming a popular holiday and tourist area...with nearby land then becoming part of the Australian Capital Territory...

Jervis Bay was sighted by Lieutenant James Cook aboard HMS Endeavour on 25th April 1770, and he named the southern headland Cape St George. The harbour was named "Jervis Bay" in August 1791 by Lieutenant Richard Bowen. He named it after Sir John Jervis who later became Admiral of the British fleet...

An astute investor, John Booth, subdivided an 80-acre property in 1859 and developed it into a private town which originally was called 'The Settlement' (just up the road from 'The Boat Harbour', that subsequently became known as Ulladulla!). In 1862, locals from Milton financed the publication of Henry Lawson's first volume of poetry by taking up a public subscription to cover its costs (Henry Lawson having been born at Yatte Yattah, just north of the town)...

Ulladulla started its life as the port for settlers in the area near the town that today is Milton...Today, Ulladulla is home to one of the state’s largest fleets of commercial fishing trawlers. But, increasingly, the town has become a significant commercial centre as well as a coastal holiday resort and popular place for retirees...

Currowan, on the upper reaches of the Clyde River and adjacent to Currowan Creek, was a planned township. The site of the village was fixed in 1844 and a village plan laid out by then colonial surveyor and later ill-fated explorer, Edmund Kennedy. It was proclaimed a town on 20 March 1885...

Nelligen was once the main port on the Clyde River. Reminders of its importaat history can still be found in the town which was by-passed in December 1964 when a bridge was opened providng a direct road link from Queanbeyan/Canberra to Batemans Bay...

Batemans Bay was one of the few places along the NSW South Coast named by James Cook in 1770. It has grown to become the largest coastal community between Wollongong and Melbourne...

Alluvial gold was discovered near Mogo in 1851, leading to a gold rush that eventually extended throughout a wider Mogo-Nerrigundah-Araluen-Majors Creek area...

Gold was discovered in the Araluen Valley in 1851. The Araluen goldfields were to become one of the most productive in Australia. At its peak, 30,000 men were working in the area.

Gold was recovered using various methods at different times - by panning, through dredging, by hydraulic sluicing, by reef mining...

Broulee was, for a period, a busy port. It was used to ship out local resources, initially agricultural and later gold, timber and shell grit. The township was surveyed and gazetted in 1837. By the time land sales commenced in 1840 a post office was opened, mail was being delivered each week and the first court in the district was established. In 1841 Broulee was made the centre of a police district which covered the area from Jervis Bay to Eden. However, in 1841, a flood washed away the bar at the mouth of the Moruya River, enabling vessels to sail up the river to a much safer port. Broulee's importance then faded...

Granite Town, on the northern bank of the Moruya River, was built, thrived, and then disappeared within a span of about eight years (1924 - 1932). It was probably the first purpose-built multi-ethnic settlement in Australia. Its residents had a home and job security, something that was rare in rural Australia during the Great Depression...

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...

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...

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...