Bodalla, New South Wales facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Bodalla New South Wales
All Saints Church, Bodalla; commemorating Thomas Mort.
The Big Cheese.
Bodalla Location in New South Wales
Population	808 (2021 census)
Postcode(s)	2545
Location	51 km (32 mi) from Batemans Bay
LGA(s)	Eurobodalla Shire
County	Dampier
State electorate(s)	Bega
Federal Division(s)	Eden-Monaro

Bodalla is a small town on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It is located within the Eurobodalla Shire area. The town sits on the main Princes Highway. You can easily reach nearby towns like Moruya, Narooma, and Potato Point by road.

The Yuin people are the traditional owners of this region. The name 'Bodalla' comes from their language. It has a few possible meanings, such as "Boat Alley" or "haven for boats".

Thomas Sutcliffe Mort and the Dairy Estate

A dairy herd in Bodalla, around 1900.

Thomas Sutcliffe Mort was an important person in Bodalla's history. From 1856, he started buying land in the Moruya area. Eventually, he owned a huge amount of land, about 38,000 acres (150 square kilometers).

In 1860, he bought Bodalla Station. He planned to create a special country estate there. He wanted to show how land could be used in a really good way. He changed the beef cattle farm into a large dairy estate. This meant focusing on milk, cheese, and butter.

Mort worked hard to improve the land. He cleared areas, drained swamps, and built fences. He also planted special grasses and set up milking sheds. He even provided equipment for making cheese and butter. He also built two churches for the people working on his estate. One was Anglican and the other Catholic.

By the 1870s, the farmers who were sharing the land with him became unhappy. They decided to leave. So, Mort took over running the estate himself. He managed it as three large farms with hired workers.

Transporting Dairy Products

After Mort passed away in 1878, his trustees continued to run the farms. In 1887, they created the Bodalla Company. This helped manage the estate's main business.

Around 1883, the trustees built a special horse tramway. This tramway went from near the Bodalla Post Office to the North Narooma Wharf. It made it much easier and cheaper to send the farm's products to Sydney. One horse pulling a tram could move as much as three horses pulling a cart on the road! The tramway stopped being used between 1889 and 1891. This was because the local coastal roads were improved.

The trustees also opened a shop in the Strand Arcade in Sydney. This shop sold the milk, butter, cheese, and bacon made on the Bodalla estate.

Bodalla Cheese Today

Eventually, the dairy factory was bought by the Bodalla Dairy Co-operative. They ran it until it closed in 1987. By then, only thirteen farms were supplying milk to the factory. These farms then started sending their milk to the dairy company in Bega.

Today, Bodalla Cheese is a brand owned by Fonterra Brands (Australia) Pty Ltd. Fonterra is a dairy company from New Zealand.

The Big Cheese Visitors' Centre was once part of the old factory. It is one of Australia's many "big" roadside tourist attractions. You can find it on the northern edge of the town. It closed in 2007.

All Saints Church

All Saints Church is a beautiful building in Bodalla. It was built to remember Thomas Sutcliffe Mort and his wife, Theresa Shepheard Mort. The church was designed by a famous architect named Edmund Blacket.

The first stone for the church was laid on March 18, 1880, by Marianne Mort, Thomas's second wife. The church was finally finished in 1901. Inside, it has one of only seven small organs made by Henry Willis & Sons. This organ was built in 1881 and installed the next year. The church cost about £13,000 to build.

Bodalla's Population

Let's look at who lives in Bodalla! In the 2021 Census, there were 808 people living in the town.

• About 51.1% of the people were male, and 48.9% were female.
• Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people made up 8.0% of the population.
• The average age of people in Bodalla was 53 years old.