Tallygaroopna
Here is Tallygaroopna!
The photographs on this page were sent to me by my cousin Gloria and shows modern day Tallygaroopna. The place name, which would be strange to many, is well-known to me as this is where my mother, Merlyn (Dudley) Mann, and her siblings lived. I have many memories of visiting the house of my grandparents when I was very small including a sleep-out off the main verandah which was covered with sheets of newspaper. I also vividly remember the glorious perfume of clove carnations when I walked up the few stairs to the front verandah. Just across the lane were my Canet relations.
I spent many happy hours high up in a very large peppercorn tree in the front garden where I could gaze across the road to Tallygaroopna State School. I wasn't at school myself so must have been under the age of 5. What were my parents doing allowing me to climb so high?
Tallygaroopna appears to have gained its name from a pastoral station of the same name which was begun in the 1840’s by Edward Khull. Thirty years or so later the station was broken up to enable settlement of the area however Tallygaroopna Homestead still stands. On 7 December 1875 a post office was opened and life in the small town began. Tallygaroopna is 207 kilometres north of Melbourne and is part of the City of Greater Shepparton. It is on the Goulburn Valley Highway and remains a fairly small place as the 2006 Census revealed a population of 270. Tallygaroopna is 17 kilometres north of Shepparton and 18 kilometres south of Numurkah.
The township has numerous small businesses, a primary school and the Tallygaroopna Soldiers’ Memorial Hall where the dedication reads "To commemorate the services of those who fought in the Great War 1914-1918". Names on the memorial include family names Dudley and Montgomery. I have a delightful memory of this hall, I would have been ten or so when my cousins, Maurice and Sid Roughsedge (and I assume their wives-to-be Bet Graham and Doris Latham) took me along to a dance there.
