The wealthy pastoralist Andrew Cunningham acquired a number of grazing properties along the Murrumbidgee River in the 1840s and 50s. The two main acquisitions were Lanyon and Tuggeranong which together covered about 8,400 hectares. He purchased Tuggeranong (at that stage known as the Waniassa estate) from Sheriff Thomas MacQuoid’s son in 1858. The property became the centre for Cunningham’s sheep-breeding and the sheds saw the shearing of all his flocks and those of neighbouring farms.
In 1874 Andrew Cunningham’s youngest son, Jim, moved to the property which took the name ‘Tuggranong’ to distinguish it from the surrounding parish, ‘Tuggeranong’. He lived in a small stone cottage on the property and superintended the shearing and the care of the stud sheep. In 1889, aged 39, Jim married 19-year old Mary Twynam, the daughter of Edward Twynam, the NSW Surveyor General. In January 1890, they returned to ‘Tuggranong’ in the middle of a severe drought, after a honeymoon spent abroad. Mary and Jim raised 8 children at the homestead between 1890 and 1903, all but the eldest, Jane, being born at the homestead with the Queanbeyan doctor, Sidney Richardson, in attendance. Over the years, as the family grew, additions were made to the house with a new and much larger homestead being built in 1908.
The colourful and often tragic story of this family is told in Jennifer Horsfield’s biography of Mary, ‘Mary Cunningham: An Australian Life’ (Ginninderra Press, 2004). All the children attended boarding school: the boys went to Geelong Grammar and the girls to Ascham School in Sydney and then to Frensham at Mittagong. Being country children they looked forward to the long summer holidays and often brought friends to stay at Tuggranong where they enjoyed games of tennis, long horse rides and picnics by the river. One friend who visited Tuggranong from Sydney was the young Grace Cossington Smith, who established herself as one of Australia’s leading modernist artists between the wars.
Mary’s eldest daughter, Jane, died tragically at Tuggranong in 1910, from an infected appendix. She was just 20 years old. Andrew Twynam Cunningham, Mary’s eldest son, had a dashing but controversial career in the Light Horse during the Great War, winning a Military Cross for courage shown in the battle of Gaza in 1917.
The Cunninghams left Tuggranong in the middle of 1914 and moved to their sister property of Lanyon, which Jim had purchased after the death of his brother, Andrew Jackson Cunningham. After the establishment of the Federal Capital Territory in 1911, all land within the territory was to be eventually acquired by the Commonwealth. Jim negotiated with the government to purchase Tuggranong along with two outstations, Congwarra and Tidbinbilla, on the western side of the Murrumbidgee River.
Copies of ‘Mary Cunningham: An Australian Life’ (Ginninderra Press, 2004) by Jennifer Horsfield are available from the Tuggeranong Homestead’s Sunday Café during opening hours for a RRP of $27.50.