Members of the group ‘History of Batemans Bay and Districts Past and Present’ organised the reunion, held at the Batemans Bay Soldier’s Club on Saturday, May 6 and at Korners Park, on Sunday, May 7.

Organiser Leah Burke said initial estimates of 100-200 attendees were vastly exceeded, with more than 320 people at the reunion.

Mrs Burke said the reunion gave Batemans Bay locals a chance to come together after decades apart.

“It was about bringing the locals out together because, if you talk to the locals they’ll say, ‘I can go down to the Bay and I won’t see anybody I know,’” she said.

“The only time we meet is at funerals.

“I was at the door and everyone that left smiled and said, ‘That was a fantastic night.’”

Co-organiser Stephen Dunne started the Facebook group in September 2015, which today has more than 2000 members. Mr Dunne said the reunion grew from previous, smaller meet ups.

“We had a Baby Boomers’ trip with three carloads up to Shallow Crossing one weekend with people from the group,” Mr Dunne said.

“The next thing we organised was one from Runnyford up to Nelligen and it was 20 carloads, it snowballed.

“Then locals from Batemans Bay wanted to have a reunion, so in February this year, we got together and said we would organise one for all the out-of-towners to come back and it just snowballed from there.

Mr Dunne said it was special to catch up with old classmates, many of whom had since moved as far as Canberra, Queensland and the North Coast.

“It’s been a great get-together for all the local families. So many people are interested in the town’s history.”

The Bay Post/Moruya Examiner spoke to Batemans Bay locals, both past and present, at the reunion. Here are some of their fond memories of life in Batemans Bay

Malcolm Ladmore: I was born in Batemans Bay and spent my first 16 years here. Then I went away to teacher’s college, but this is my home. My family has been here since the 1870s, so they’re one of the original families in the area. They had the first bakery here, the first cafe here. It’s hard to tell in a small number of words the influence they had on the development of this town.

My great-grandparents are buried in the old cemetery above the shopping centre in Bent Street. My great-grandfather was born in Adelaide, then came to Mogo and lived in Waterfall. Then he moved to Batemans Bay and had 13 children. One of them was my grandfather, Fred Ladmore. They had the bakery in Batemans Bay. It was where the Mariners Motel is, right next to Errol’s shop.  

Some of the people I saw last night, I hadn’t seen for 55 years. They were a bit upset when I didn’t know them. I live on the North Coast now. The sad thing is, if you were in this town and I said the Ladmore family were a very important pioneering family in this town, they would say, there’s no sign of it or no street names. I think it’s something we need to fix. That’s not the only name missing. Percy Bill, who owned the hotel for many years and his daughter owned the hotel after him, he was a very famous, generous man, but there’s nothing about him in town. We need to recognise this town didn’t come from nowhere, it came from those pioneering families.

Like a lot of old towns, the people are very parochial. It’s where they were born and where they were raised and a lot of them have come back. A fair few still live here, but a lot of them have come back for that reason. We did it tough, but we enjoyed life. It was the day of no television or mobile phones, so we made our own enjoyment. But we were lucky in a way too. We had our picture theatre, which a lot of towns never had. It was quite a good little town. We had a lot of things happening here that didn’t happen in other towns.

Obviously the towns are going to grow and things are going to change, and you’ve got to go with that, but that’s why the historical society is so important because that’s where the history of the town is. You’ve got to remember the old because that’s where we all came from. It’s still a beaut place and today, it’s one of the prettiest places you’d ever want to see. And when you drive over that hill and see the bridge, you get tears in your eyes. It’s my home, it’s where I was raised. I went to school with all these guys. We had a great life, a simple life. 

Errol Ralston: I was born in this town in 1941 on the 19th of September and I lived on Beach Road in mum and dad’s house, which is virtually where the Soldier’s Club bistro is now. When I look across the river, the old headmaster’s house is there and the old school is still there, and that’s where I went to primary school. That was Batemans Bay Public School.

My father was a second-generation oyster farmer and I followed mum’s footsteps. I’ve been in the rag game ever since I left school at 15. I was a bright spark. As a 12 year-old you had to go to Moruya High School. Mum had a shop where the Mariner’s carpark is now. It was known to the commercial travellers as a little Anthony Horden’s. We had groceries. If someone wanted half a pound of butter, you’d cut the butter in half. Everything was weighed up. We used to sell ammunition, fish hooks, fishing lines – whatever you wanted, we had it. Now that was right next door to Ladmore’s bakery. I did away with the groceries not long after as the profit margin in groceries was down to about 12 per cent and there wasn’t a lot of money in it. There were other shops coming into town that had refrigeration, which we didn’t have.

I stuck to drapery, haberdashery, men’s, women’s and kid’s footwear, school uniforms and all the rest. We ran that shop until 1969, when I bought a cafe, which was right next door to where the Commonwealth Bank is now. I sold it in November 1979. I did 12 years working for Grace Brothers in Canberra and after 25 years, I retired on the 31st of December 1999 and the wife and I went to Banora Point, near Tweed Heads. We stuck it out for 12 years and we’ve been back in the Bay for the past 5 or 6 years. We live at Long Beach now. Prior to that, my wife and I had a plot in a cemetery in Batemans Bay and to the GPs up in Banora Point I used to say, “If anything happens to me, I’ve got a plot down in Batemans Bay.’” And he’d say, “That will be right, we’ll just throw you in the back of a Woolworths truck and send you down.’” But they don’t have to worry about that now. 

I met a young girl at the reunion last night and and she said, “Errol, I know you. I worked for you in your shop.’” She worked for us for two Christmases. Her mother was from one of the oldest generations in town. 

The biggest change was turning Orient Street one way. You have to grow, otherwise Orient Street would never handle the traffic. Orient Street was the main street. I’d hate to be in retail in Batemans Bay now, because it’s grown and grown and grown.