Tocumwal  New South Wales

The locals tend to think big in the small Murray River town of Tocumwal on the NSW side of the border. The original locals, the Aborigines, reckon that back in the Dreaming a giant cod lived in a local waterhole. Today the legend lives on in a whopping fibreglass fish in the town square. War also came to Tocumwal big-time between 1939 and 1945 when the RAAF established its largest World War II base in Australia outside the town. Today the old RAAF base is home to the Sportavia Soaring Centre which attracts both experienced and would-be glider pilots. Tocumwal is also a significant ultralight flight centre. There is a popular picnic area on a sandy-beached stretch of the river just a couple of hundred metres from the centre of town, while there is an impressive collection of scaled models of Australian trains in the Old Railway Store. There is a wealth of history and sweat locked into the lanolin engrained floors of the Tuppal woolshed, about 35km along the road to Deniliquin. A cornerstone of the Falkiner pastoral empire, Tuppal Station's shed was one of the largest in the nation at the peak of the woollen industry and one of the first to convert from blade to machine shearing. In the glory days Tuppal shore more than 200,000 sheep a year to produce 3444 bales of wool.