In 1996, Gwen Silvey and Brian Craven published “The McLaughlin Family and the Cottage ‘Tarella’, 99 Blaxland Road.” It is a brief account of the family and ‘Tarella.
According to Silvey and Craven, Beryl McLaughlin in 1937 purchased the land on which Tarella and the Blue Mountains History Research Centre building now stand. Beryl continued to use Tarella as a holiday letting, and, of course, there was no Research Centre in 1937.
In 2003, Joan Smith, Researcher, and Susan Warmbath, Curator of Tarella, worked together on a time-line of Beryl’s Life.
Three dates stand out in this TimeLine: 1951, 1957 and 1967.
In 1951, Beryl designed a house at 10 Yanko Avenue, Wentworth Falls, and moved in there with her sister, Ida.
In 1957, Beryl designed and built, at a cost of £3,900, a second house, this time at 19 Yanko Avenue. She and Ida then moved there.
Finally, in 1967 Beryl and Ida moved back to Tarella, modernising both the kitchen and the bathroom and repainting the exterior white with a green roof.
What happened at Tarella while Beryl and Ida were living elsewhere before moving back to Tarella?
In c.1947, John Harley McLaughlin, their brother, resided at Tarella until he died in 1953 on 30 June at Blue Mountains District Anzac Memorial Hospital at Katoomba.
‘Tarella’ lay vacant until the end of 1954. At that time, Beryl offered the property to the Blue Mountains Historical Society as a museum.
The property was transferred to Blue Mountains City Council in August, 1955.
At that time, the cottage was tenanted by a Mr Rippon who agreed that the Society should have access to it for meetings.
The arrangement between the Historical Society and the Council proved to be unsatisfactory and Beryl had the property transferred back to her in 1964.
In 1967, the land around “Tarella” was subdivided and the northern half was transferred to the Blue Mountains Historical Society. On it, Beryl had erected, at her own cost, the eastern part of the building now known as the Research Centre. In 1982, the western wing was added to the Museum for use as a meeting room.
Shortly before she died on 29 June 1988, Beryl transferred the other half of the sub-divided land and the cottage to the Historical Society and, on her death, left the remainder of her estate to the society.
On a recent wet Friday morning, 7 March 2025, four people, Karen Kuypers, Jane Thompson, David Thompson and Helen Smith turned up unannounced at the History Research Centre, wondering if they could look inside ‘Tarella’. Of course, it wasn’t open and all the furniture was covered with dust cloths.
But one of the women had travelled from Western Australia, the other was from Broken Hill, while the remaining two people, father and daughter, were local. Unfortunately, the travellers would be well away from the Mountains next Open Day.
So we took them over for a quick inspection and were rewarded with a fascinating tale.
As we opened the door on the verandah, Karen exclaimed, “the steep stairs to the attic are just inside.” She was correct – the stairs to the two upstairs rooms are just there.
As we walked down the hall towards the kitchen, she said, “There’s a window between the kitchen and the dining room where we used to pass the food through.” The hatch was also just where she remembered.
It was a real trip down memory lane for Karen, who was born in 1951. She remembers the McLaughlin Room as a bedroom, but also said that the Renton girls slept in the parlour – that was their room.
She and her family slept up the steep stairs in the “attic” as she called it.
We didn’t have to lift off any of the dust cloths, because the furniture really didn’t interest our visitors. They were more interested in seeing the rooms and remembering when their family lived there.
Karen’s younger sister, Jane, remembered outside better. Jane was born in 1958 and had fewer memories of inside. She remembered the knoll as sandstone on which they played. They loved running down the hill to the old orchard, where there were still a few trees.
Karen remembered the blackberries and loved picking them.
And why did they live briefly in ‘Tarella’?
Their uncle, Harry (Robert Henry) Renton was employed by the Blue Mountains City Council as an engineer and surveyor.
He, his wife Patricia (nee Fobister) and their three daughters, Heather, Ann and Beverley, were living in ‘Tarella’ around 1962. Patricia was pregnant with their fourth child, and the Boscence family came down from Broken Hill to help out after baby Helen was born.
The Boscence girls, Karen and Jane, and their older sister Vicki (born 1949), loved living at ‘Tarella’.
After about six months they moved home to Broken Hill, but later moved back to Katoomba when Karen was five, as she started school in Katoomba. They lived in View Street, and even remembered their phone number!
Showing them through ‘Tarella’ was a pleasure and they were so thrilled to relive some of their early memories.
In doing so, they have helped the Society fill in more of the details of Tarella’s long history.
