Trucks line the main highway in the heart of Tarcutta

 

Tarcutta (including Kyeamba)
Major trucking stop approximately halfway between Sydney and Melbourne
It is hard to see Tarcutta as anything more than a stopover place on the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne. From the 1960s to the 1990s it was ideally located at around the halfway point between Australia's two major cities and it attracted a lot of travellers eager to break their journey for a meal although the lack of a larger community meant that it never enjoyed the popularity of Albury, Gundagai and Yass. With the improvement of the road, which means that it is now relatively easy to drive from Sydney to Melbourne in less than a day, the town's importance has diminished. Today the town is little more than a couple of service stations and a ribbon of houses stretching along the highway.

Tarcutta is located 430 km south of Sydney and 240 m above sea level. The area was first explored by Europeans when Hume and Hovell passed through it on their way from Sydney to Port Phillip. On 7 January 1825, near the present site of Tarcutta, they met a group of Wiradjuri Aborigines. The meeting seems to have been amicable with Hume later writing that the explorers had been met by a group who had 'begged the travellers would accompany them to their camp so the women and children might have an opportunity of seeing them.' Hume believed that the people were curious about Europeans.

A decade after this 'first contact', around 1835-37, 'Hambledon', a U-shaped slab house was built at Tarcutta. It was the first inn and post office to be built between Gundagai and Albury and, as such, is the basis upon which the small township was created.

By the 1880s the locals were actively lobbying to get a branch line through Tarcutta and on to Tumbarumba. By 1917 Tarcutta had a railway but, inevitably, lack of business and rationalising of the rail services meant that it eventually closed.

If Tarcutta does have any claim to fame it is its connection with contemporary Australian poets. Les Murray wrote 'The Burning Truck' in the local cafe in 1961 and that same cafe is described by Bruce Dawe in 'Under Way' when he writes: 'there would be days / banging open and shut like the wire door of the cafe in Tarcutta / where the flies sang at the windows'.

Things to see:  

 

Truck Drivers Memorial

 

Truck Drivers' Memorial
For decades Tarcutta, located almost exactly halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, has been a popular stopover point for truck drivers making their way between the two east coast cities. It has also, tragically, seen more than its share of accidents as drivers, both old and young, have crashed and been killed. In 1994 Re-Car Consolidated Industries established a monument to, as the plaque says, "the memory of truck drivers who have been accidentally killed while performing their duties in the transport industry". It is a frightening reminder of how many drivers are killed. Located on the eastern side of the road in the centre of Tarcutta it is well worth visiting.

 

Kyeamba and the Travellers Joy Inn
Further south on the highway is Kyeamba, a town which acquired some notoriety in the 1860s when the bushranger 'Mad Dan' Morgan, who at the time was terrorising the surrounding area, decided that the Travellers Joy Inn was an ideal stopover for a hungry and thirsty bushranger. The inn, which is now a private property, can be seen on the right hand side of the road (if you are travelling south) about 4.5 kilometres south of Kyeamba.

 

 

 

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Tarcutta