Tahmoor, New South Wales

Tahmoor is a small town in the Macarthur Region of New South Wales, Australia, in Wollondilly Shire.HistoryOriginally named Myrtle Creek, it was a farming area on the Great Southern Road, later named the Hume Highway.When the new Main Southern Railway line opened in 1919, it included a railway station named Tahmoor. This name was contested by a local businessman, who wished to establish a town called Bronzewing Park, but his claim was rejected. The town had recently been named "Tahmoor", a local Aboriginal word for the common bronzewing, (Phaps chalcoptera) a native pigeon often seen in the area.The Bargo River passes just south of the town; the Bargo River Crossing on the Great South Road was so notoriously difficult for travellers, causing many delays and accidents, that it has even passed into Australian folklore, in the form of the song Stringybark and Greenhide'If you travel on the road, and chance to stick in Bargo, To avoid a bad capsize, you must unload your cargo; For to pull a dray about, I do not see the force on, Take a bit of green hide, and hook another horse on.'The uncleared scrub ('brush') on the opposite bank was known as the Bargo Brush, and was much feared as the haunt of escaped convicts turned bushranger. The road through the Bargo Brush was often all but impassible, as this letter of 1861 attests:I have just travelled through the Bargo Brush, on the Great Southern Road, but such a road, I unhesitatingly say, never existed in any other civilised or uncivilised part of the world. Dr. Leichhardt met with nothing like it on his overland journey to Port Essington ; nor did Bruce, in his travels in Abyssinia ; nor did Mungo Park, or Dr. Livingstone, in their travels in the interior of Africa.