Cooma Travel Guide

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Could be a song in that title. I digress. Cooma has quite a few historical buildings and they tend to be in clusters. One of the prettiest, especially in spring, is Lambie Street, in which the name Hain figures over and over again. The street itself was named after John Lambie, the then Commissioner for Crown Lands on the Monara during the 1840's.
The Hain name is writ large upon every second building here. The builder Joseph Hain marked the bricks at number 7 where George Mould, a former medical student from Dublin, offered free medical services (form an orderly queue to the right please!).
Next door (9) was a licenced premises built for James Hain and tragedy ensued when William Hain was sleeping in a newly-painted room in the hotel the night before it opened and lit a fire in a bucket to speed the drying of the paint but was overcome by the deadly fumes.
The pub on the previous page was built by James Hain and number 19 was built for Frederick Hain, son of Joseph, and it later became an honorary magistrate's home.
Number 20 was built by a skilled English stonemason for Joseph Hain's daughter, Mre. Rose, and the remodelled garden has won several awards.
Number 23 was built by Joseph Hain and was the residence of the journalist who founded the local paper (the Cooma Monaro Express), Gustave Miller.

As a result of Cooma's varied history there are many interesting historic and cultural attractions in the town.
The Lord Raglan Inn was built during the Kiandra Gold Rush to accommodate travellers to the gold fields.
Today it houses the Raglan Gallery and Cultural Centre. Where you can view works by local artists as well as special exhibitions by artists from further around the area.

Favorite thing: The construction of the Scheme began officially on 17 October 1949 with a blast of dynamite on the Eucumbene River at Adaminaby. During the next 25 years, the Snowy Mountains Scheme brought together over 100,000 people from more than 30 countries, including Australia, to work on the project. While migrants outnumbered Australians, Australians (including Indigenous Australians) made up one third of the workforce.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the commencement of the Scheme's construction, an Avenue of Flags was erected in Cooma in 1959, celebrating the diversity of nationalities that worked on the construction of the Scheme.