TILBA TILBA and CENTRAL TILBA

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Tilba Tilba and Central Tilba

'We come to Tilba Tilba, a perfect little gem in the wildest and most rugged setting. It is quite impossible to convey in words any adequate idea of the wildly picturesque romantic beauty of this fertile little spot. It must be seen to be properly appreciated, and I would strongly recommend some of those who are eternally bewailing the monotony of Australian life and scenery to go to Tilba Tilba, and stop there for the rest of their natural lives.’
– Evening News, 2nd September 1871

Behind the villages of Tilba Tilba and Central Tilba sits Gulaga (Mount Dromedary), the remnant of an extinct volcano that shaped the geology of the surrounding area.

Gulaga is sacred to the people of the Yuin nation. It was/is their women’s mountain (nearby Mumbulla Mountain was/is their men’s mountain).

The Yuin called the district ‘Tilba Tilba’ meaning ‘many waters’ in the Thawa dialect.

Henry Jefferson Bate was the first major settler in the area. He occupied a property called ‘Mountain View’ near what is now the village of Tilba Tilba.

In 1873 a Post Office was established at Tilba Tilba on the ‘Mountain View’ property, indicating there was sufficient local demand for a regular postal service. A hall was built in 1879-1880 and a Church of England was erected by 1882. In 1883 the main south road to Bega was passing through the town.

In 1892 Henry Jefferson Bate died and ‘Mountain View’ passed to his son Richard Mossop Bate. He subdivided the village area and 28 lots were offered at an auction in January 1894. The auction, however, was not particularly successful because of plans to establish another village adjacent to the ABC Cheese Factory.

The ABC Cheese Factory had been built in 1891 on a ridge above Tilba Tilba (in what is now Central Tilba). It was the first co-operative cheese factory in NSW. (By 1907, 16 dairies within a three mile (five kilometre) radius of it were supplying it with milk and in 1917-1918 it was processing half a million gallons of milk per year. In 1965, 38 diary farms were supplying the factory, but this dropped to 16 in 1975. The ABC Cheese Factory closed in 1981.

There were also a number of other cheese factories operating in the surrounding areas at that time. For example, H.J. Bates had a factory at ‘Mountain View’ from about 1877 that became the Tilba Tilba Dairy Cooperative around 1920. The Fairview and Spring Hills properties had cheese factories, a factory was built nearby for the NSW Creamery Butter Company, and there was a Corunna Dairy Factory.)

The town of Central Tilba then basically developed to serve the dairy farmers who were supplying milk to the ABC Cheese Factory.

In 1895 an auction of Central Tilba town lots was held. Soon thereafter a Temperance Hall was erected in the town and a store, a butcher, a blacksmith and a shoemaker were trading. A ‘postal receiving office’ was also established in the village on a six month trial.

It seems there was considerable antagonism between those promoting the future of Central Tilba and those promoting Tilba Tilba. This was particularly evident at a public meeting in April 1899, held to discuss the location of new school – the meeting finally agreeing it would best be sited (where it is today) between the two villages.

Central Tilba proved to be more progressive than Tilba Tilba and, in 1902, Tilba Tilba’s post office was reduced in status because business had declined. A Postal Inspector then described Tilba Tilba as ‘a private village’ consisting of ‘a Post and Telegraph Office (in rented premises), one store, one hotel, one blacksmith, one baker, one dressmaker, one butter factory, one small cheese factory, mail contractor’s stables, public hall, church and 20 other houses within a mile radius’.

For about 50 years gold mining also became an important activity in the area.

Payable gold was first reported in June 1860 on Mt Dromedary’s northern creeks. The following year, 20 miners were working the area. By the mid-1870s, when alluvial mining in the area peaked, there were about 150 men employed there looking for gold.

Reef gold was identified on Mt Dromedary in 1877. This led to a further influx of miners to the area, tunnels being driven into the mountain, and stamper batteries being erected. Largish-scale mining activity continued until the 1910s…by which time tourism to the area started to emerge.

Up until August 1990, the Princes Highway passed through Tilba Tilba and skirted the Central Tilba village. The road through the Tilbas was then renamed Corkhill Drive, recognising Sister Pearl Corkhill from Tilba Tilba, who was one of only eight nurses from Australia to be awarded the Military Medal (the highest decoration available to women; their equivalent of the Victoria Cross) in World War I and the daughter of William Henry Corkhill who is remembered for a collection of early photographs he took of the Tilba district.

A Tilba Conservation Area, encompassing both Tilba Tilba and Central Tilba villages, was listed by the National Trust in 1974, signifying that the area is considered to have high heritage significance. A 'Tilba Villages and Conservation Area Development Control Plan’ concluded that ‘The conservation area is particularly significant for its high integrity, which is evident in the large number of surviving timber buildings and the general land layout and usage pattern…The relocation of the highway in the second half of the 20th century relieved road pressure on the area, enabling retention of the narrow road widths and steeper grades of earlier times. The combination of traditional building typology, land-use pattern, rural roads and topography, all set against the backdrop of Gulaga, endows the area with exceptional aesthetic and historic value.’

‘Tilba Times revisited’ by Laurelle Pacey, available locally, provides a more detailed history of Tilba Tilba, Central Tilba and surrounding areas.

Image: Commercial traveller for Robert Reed and Co. Ltd. at the Temperance Hall, Tilba Tilba, New South Wales, c. 1906 by W H Corkhill. nla.obj-140290018