Once an iconic spot for truckies to stop, the small town of Tarcutta was forever changed back in 2011 when the Hume Highway bypassed it.
Located almost exactly halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, it’s a much quieter place now, but it’s still a convenient – and an interesting – place for grey nomads to stop and have a look around.
Somewhat ironically, its main point of interest now is the Truck Drivers Memorial. Built in 1994, the monument pays tribute to ‘the memory of truck drivers who have been accidentally killed while performing their duties in the transport industry’.
On it are recorded names of many drivers who have died in tragic accidents. It’s incredibly sad, and a sobering reminder to all travellers of just how perilous our roads can be.
Tarcutta's famous ‘air horn arm pull’ steel statues. PIC: Cizza
A more upbeat tribute to the truckies’ legacy in Tarcutta are the ‘Arm Horn’ sculptures. Over the years, local children would stand at the side of the road in Tarcutta and, by frantically lifting their arm up and down, encourage passing truckies to give them a friendly honk of the horn.
The ‘air horn arm pull’ is now immortalised by the steel statues created by Australian blacksmith, William Maguire.
They show two children using the arm pull gesture and a toddler waving to passing truck drivers. Tarcutta, which has a population of around 500, was first visited by the European explorers Hume and Hovell in 1825.
The first house was built about a decade later and a post office opened in 1849. Gold was reportedly mined in the area for a while but not as successfully as elsewhere. The railway reached Tarcutta in 1917, but the branch line from Tarcutta to Tumbarumba was eventually closed in 1987.
The Truck Drivers Memorial pays tribute to the truckies accidentally killed on Australian roads. PIC: Cizza
It was really the road then, and the truckies’ changeover facilities that put Tarcutta on the map. And, of course, with the truckies, came the cafes … and they attracted some interesting characters.
Indeed, the goings-on at the eateries here actually inspired one or two literary giants. Australian poet Les Murray wrote ‘The Burning Truck’ in a local cafe in 1961, and fellow writer Bruce Dawe described the same cafe in ‘Under Way’.
He wrote: ‘There would be days / banging open and shut like the wire door of the cafe in Tarcutta / where the flies sang at the windows’.
Located some 15 kilometres south of Tarcutta is the 432-hectare Tarcutta Hills Reserve which is owned and managed by Bush Heritage Australia. This reserve provides an important remnant of white box woodland and is a refuge for the squirrel glider and endangered birds like the swift parrot.
A little further south is the town of Kyeamba, which was frequented by feared bushranger ‘Mad Dan’ Morgan in the 1860s, as he sought out a little rest and relaxation in between terrorising the local area.
Tarcutta may not be a place that grey nomads will linger long in, but it is definitely worth a look … to see the Truck Drivers Memorial, if nothing else. There is free camping at the Tarcutta Rest area, about 13 kilometres to the south, or there are caravan parks half an hour away at Wagga Wagga to the north-west, or Gundagai to the north-east.
There is also the very pleasant Morleys Creek free camp within walking distance of Gundagai’s town centre.
