A Brief History of the BCA

A Brief History of the BCA

Prior to the Bundanoon Community Association, there were a number of organisations formed to look after the interests of the village and the community in general. One of the earliest was the Progress Association, formed in 1888. For a time in the early 20th century, it was re-named the Bundanoon Progress and Tourist Association, but returned to its former name in 2010.

The early concerns were with the condition of the roads, the tracks to the gullies, and the railway timetable, though in 1907 the Progress Association supported the push for a new school building, and in the next decade the issue was improvement in postal and telephone services and in the sporting facilities available.

Around 1937, the Progress Association merged with the Bundanoon Tourist and Development Association, and in addition to the usual concern with improvement to roads and footpaths, and so on, it advocated for a town water supply (not solved until 1963 when a dam was constructed on Bundanoon Creek to supply water to Bundanoon and Exeter, as well as Moss Vale).

By the mid-1940s, the Bundanoon Community Development Association (BCDA) had taken on the role of promoting Bundanoon’s development. During the 1940s it focussed on pushing for improvements in sanitation and drainage, while in the 1960s and 1970s it promoted Bundanoon in an attempt to pick up the village’s dwindling tourist numbers, staging carnivals, car rallies, balls, and that sort of thing. BCDA became an incorporated body in June 1991.

In 2007 BCDA changed its name to Bundanoon Community Association (BCA), the name it still has today. It continued as an incorporated body on the change of name, as registered with the NSW Department of Fair Trading on 10th May 2007. As well as promoting the interests and development of Bundanoon, for example through negotiations, say, with Wingecarribee Shire Council, BCA provides an administrative ‘umbrella’ for a number of Sub-Committees, which organise a wide range of activities in the village.

[Much of this information is drawn from the book written by the Bundanoon History Group, A Place of Deep Gullies: The History of Bundanoon, published in 2015.]

[This page is under further development.]