Avoca

Early farms, timber and the school

Timber and dairy work connected Avoca to neighbouring settlements. Philip Morton’s account, drawing on Ron Mumford’s Avoca history and newspapers, describes Thomas Seery selecting land near the school in 1863 and operating a sawmill with John Hayter on Cleary’s Lane. The partners later worked at East Kangaloon and Mount Murray; Seery also helped establish local butter factories. His brother Michael farmed at Avoca and later ran a post office from his home.^[9]

The NSW Department of Education historical dataset records a Yarrunga provisional school from September 1872 and a public school from October 1878. In April 1913 the record changed to Avoca (2), County Camden. This name history is important when searching records: a family connected with today’s Avoca may appear under Yarrunga in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century material.^[5]

The Society’s index to the 1885-1945 admissions-and-withdrawals register is based on photocopies of the original held in its archives. It documents a catchment reaching Burrawang, Avoca, Myra Vale, Fitzroy Falls, Robertson and East Kangaloon. The register preserves pupils, parent residences and sometimes leaving details, making the school a strong route into eastern-district family history. Council’s 2007 plan recorded 31 pupils and a wider bus catchment, continuing the pattern of a school serving more than its immediate village.^[6]

Ulster Park provides a connection between the Yarrunga district, local trades and later family history. The Society’s March 2021 newsletter reproduced Doug Cull’s account from Echoes Through the Mist, describing the stone house built for Peter Francis Hart at Yarrunga in the 1880s. The issue also follows the de Mestre family, who leased Ulster Park in the late 1890s. These published accounts offer leads for checking land, building and family records. The Society’s accounts give different construction years: 1881 in its March 2021 newsletter and 1883 in September 2025. Land and building records may help resolve the date.^[12][13]

Before Ulster Park took shape, Yarrunga was remembered as a small cluster of homes by the road. In a local account reproduced by the Society, Mrs Payne kept coffee ready at the post office for the Nowra mail coach late at night and again on its return before dawn. Webb’s sawmill, farms and cottages stood nearby; Peter Hart later acquired land in the area for his estate.^[12]

Community, war and dairy farming

Ron Mumford’s Echoes of War in Avoca records short biographies of people named on the First and Second World War honour rolls in Avoca Hall. The Society’s 2011 account introduces the book and its local significance.^[7]

Neighbouring communities worked together on a memorial project after the First World War. In November 1921 The Scrutineer reported a meeting at Burrawang School of Arts representing Burrawang, Wildes Meadow and Avoca. The meeting formed a committee and planned a concert and dance to support a proposed soldiers’ memorial hall at Moss Vale; the report records the plan rather than its outcome.^[10]

The district’s dairies also supplied a wider network. Reporting the opening of the Dairy Farmers’ Co-operative Milk Company factory at Moss Vale in September 1922, The Daily Telegraph named Avoca, Wildes Meadow, Yarrunga, Burrawang, Robertson and Manchester Square among the districts from which milk would be drawn. The plant was intended to produce butter and pasteurised milk for Sydney.^[11]

Avoca’s history has been kept alive by local researchers as well as official records. Echoes through the Mist began as an Avoca Bicentenary Committee history in 1988; Society volunteers later retyped and revised it, with Ron and Betty Mumford checking the text. The Society’s 2013 tribute remembers Ron’s contribution to the archives and the district’s history. The book brings together local voices and photographs that can lead researchers back to families, farms and places.^[14]