[1] It serves a local farming community relying for its prosperity mainly on sheep and cattle, and the interstate truckies who use the town as a halfway change-over point in the trade between the state capital cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

[2] The Tarcutta area was first visited by the European explorers Hume and Hovell as they passed through on their way from Sydney to Port Phillip in the Colony of Victoria.

[9] Tarcutta is situated halfway between Sydney and Melbourne on the Hume Highway, and has long been popular in the trucking industry as a stopping and changeover point for drivers.

[10] The local café, which has sustained generations of truckies, has also been the source of inspiration for some of Australia's recent modern poets, Les Murray and Bruce Dawe.

The poem reads in part: 'there would be days / banging open and shut like the wire door of the cafe in Tarcutta / where the flies sang at the windows'.

There had been extensive political arguing since 1999 between Federal and State Governments over funding and where to site a proposed Tarcutta truck changeover facility.

This reserve provides an important remnant of white box woodland with a relatively untouched grassy understory: a last refuge for the squirrel glider, endangered birds like the swift parrot, and as many as 11 other threatened wildlife species.