Caloola Club

All our activities are a means of arousing interest in conservational matters ... camping, bushwalking, nature excursion, canoeing, photography, cycling, touring by motor, discussion and lecture ... all are aimed at bringing us closer to the bushlands, the rural countryside and Man’s use of the National Heritage.Members of the club canoed 400 miles of the Murray River from Towong to Corowa in January 1950.

(Bill) Dingeldei and converted into a bus by his father, members of the club travelled across the state and sometimes interstate,[2][3] at the same time identifying areas of land, sites, and animal species that were in need of protection.

[10] Perhaps due to its close association with the Fauna Protection Panel, the club had a significant positive influence on conservation policy in the 1950s.

[12][13] Also in 1954, the Caloola Club made a submission to the Chief Guardian of Fauna in NSW calling for the declaration of the Nadgee Faunal Reserve—one of the last pristine wilderness areas on the N.S.W.

Largely due to the efforts of the club, its founder Allen Strom, and two other leading activists of NSW conservation—Myles Dunphy and Paddy Palin—the Barren Grounds Faunal Reserve was declared in 1956.

[22] The Caloola Club became a focus for efforts to establish a branch of the NSW Public Service, which would administer these parks and protect the flora and fauna of the state.

This new arm of the NSW Public Service took over and merged the functions of the Fauna Protection Panel and the Reserves Branch of the Lands Department.

However, once the long-term aim—the setting up the National Parks and Wildlife Service as a permanent branch of the NSW Public Service—finally was achieved in 1967, Strom was not appointed to lead the new organisation.

[30][31] Nonetheless, other members of the former Caloola Club, such as Allan Fox[32] and Fred Hersey,[31] took up positions in the newly created service and were influential in its early years.

[35][36] Other legacies of the Caloola Club are less tangible; many of its members were school teachers[5] and others in a position to spread knowledge and awareness of the natural world to the next generation.