Under instructions from Governor Macquarie, a road leading southward from the Cumberland Plain was commenced in 1819. Now known as Old South Road and Old Argyle Road, it extended to Bong Bong, Sutton Forest and beyond.

In 1820, the Governor undertook a tour, camping on the banks of the river near Dr Throsby’s hut. Macquarie thought the country was “really beautiful, being fit for both cultivation and grazing” and on November 14, 1821 signed an order to lay out the official village of Bong Bong on the river’s northern bank.

The Wingecarribee River floodplain was an important place for Aboriginal people who had occupied the area for thousands of years. This is Gundungurra country and the river flats provided a rich source of food including fish, frogs and waterbirds.

What must they have thought when they observed Europeans building huts that would be inundated in the next big flood? 

The floodplain on which Bong Bong village was built has always been subject to regular inundation, even though the Wingecarribee River was once little more than a chain of ponds disappearing into swamp during dry weather.

The village at Bong Bong became the first centre for law and order in the Southern Highlands, with a row of government buildings erected between 1822 and 1832, close to a westward curve in the South Road.

A hut for the first gaoler, Bryan Bagnall, on conditional pardon from his life sentence, was erected beside a simple bark-roofed lock-up in 1822, and soldiers were initially housed in huts until barracks were erected by 1829.

In the same year postal facilities were established. A school for settlers’ children had already opened in 1827, a blacksmith’s shop was built opposite the lock-up and an animal pound erected in 1832. A rough-cast commissariat store was built between 1829 and 1831 at the east end of the government row.

The magistrates, among them Charles Throsby and James Atkinson, supervised the two or three constables, lock-up keeper and scourger, as well as the clerk servicing their courts, while the soldiers were under military command. Incidentally there were two men named Charles Throsby – Dr Charles Throsby who died in 1828 and his nephew and heir Charles Throsby Jnr.

To provide accommodation for travellers and those attending the courts, in 1827 William Bowman opened the Argyle Inn on land overlooking Bong Bong.

In 1830 Sir Thomas Mitchell surveyed a new line for the South Road to avoid the steep Mittagong Range and flood-prone Bong Bong. Constructed by road gangs in the early 1830s, it diverted travellers to a new administrative centre five miles downstream at Berrima, leaving Bong Bong village to wither away.

The post office was moved to Berrima in 1837 and the Argyle Inn closed. Except for the commissariat store, which became a general store, the government buildings at Bong Bong were in total disrepair when the site was sold to Charles Throsby Jnr in 1844. 

The consequent growth of Moss Vale after the southern railway opened through the district in 1867 did not restore settlement at Bong Bong but gave a modest prosperity for a while to the store.

In 1986 Wingecarribee Shire Council acquired a major portion of the original Bong Bong site, on the western side of Moss Vale-Bowral Road, until then used for grazing cattle and as an airfield. In 1994 the council dedicated it as the Bong Bong Common and a management committee was appointed.

The history provided above is from a booklet recently produced by the Bong Bong Common Management Committee. 

It further explains how in January 2017, the council acquired land on the eastern side of the road, where the store and Throsby’s hut had been situated, thus preserving the entire Bong Bong site.

This now links with the Cecil Hoskins Nature Reserve to create a larger public space along the Wingecarribee River for present and future generations to enjoy.

Plans are underway to have the Common listed as an item of State Significance.