SYDNEY LIVING MUSEUMS

Exterior view of Meroogal and garden

Exterior view of Meroogal and garden Photo © Nicholas Watt for Sydney Living Museums

Welcome to Meroogal

A few blocks from the town centre of Nowra on NSW’s south coast, Meroogal is a rare and precious gem. Barely changed since it was built in the 1880s, the distinctive ‘Carpenter Gothic’ house has been loved and maintained by four generations of Thorburn and MacGregor women through the pleasures and labours of daily life.

The house still overflows with their belongings – favourite books and ornaments, furniture, photographs, diaries and journals, newspaper clippings, receipts and recipes, appliances and clothes – and the garden, although reduced from its original size, still provides fruits and fresh produce that hint at their self-sufficiency and hospitality. Meroogal invites us into their lives, and through their private histories draws us into a shared and living past.

Some houses are immediately friendly and inviting. Meroogal is such a house. Handed down through four generations of women from one local family, it tells a multitude of stories about the ‘Roogal’ women and the south-coast community in which they lived.