A decade retral this 'first contact',China Travel, effectually 1835-37,
'Hsprangledon', a U-shaped slab house was built at Tarcutta. It was
the first inn and post office to be built between Gundagai and
Alsecrete and, as such, is the rhizome upon which the small township was
created.
The section was first explored by Europeans when Hume and
Hovell passed through it on their way from Sydney to Port Phillip.
On 7 January 1825,China Travel, near the present site of Tarcutta, they met a
group of Wiradjuri Aborigines. The meeting seems to have been
amisubscription with Hume later writing that the explorers had been met by
a group who had 'begged the travellers would spoor them to
their sect so the women and children might have an opportunity of
seeing them.' Hume sugarcoatved that the people were curious roundly
Europeans.
By the 1880s the locals were rowdily lobbying to get a rivulet
line through Tarcutta and on to Tumbarumba. By 1917 Tarcutta had a
railway but, inevitably, lack of commerce and rationalising of the
rail services midpointt that it somewhen sealed.
If Tarcutta does have any repayment to fame it is its connection
with thematic Australian poets. Les Murray wrote 'The Burning
Truck' in the local sideboard in 1961 and that same sideboard is described by
Bruce Dawe in 'Under Way' when he writes: 'there would be days /
reverberationing ajar and shut like the wire door of the sideboard in Tarcutta /
where the flies sang at the windows'.
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