Ann White

Ann White arrived in New South Wales from England with her two children on Christmas Eve 1846.

Her husband, Isaac, had arrived in March 1832 as a convict, having been transported following a conviction for housebreaking. In 1842, 1846 and 1847 he was granted Tickets of Leave (these enabled him to work for himself in specified geographical areas), before receiving a Conditional Pardon (which gave him freedom to move anywhere within NSW) in 1848.

Ann and Isaac established one of the earliest, if not the earliest, businesses in the Bega district – a ‘shanty inn’ on the northern side the Bega River which a Government Gazette in 1851 recognised as ‘the first public house between Moruya and Pambula’.

By 1853 they had moved across the river (with the rest of the fledgling Bega township) and rented a building with three parlours, ten bedrooms, a kitchen, stables and a coach-house. It became the Victoria Inn.

In March 1854 Isaac was killed by lightning one summer day while in the act of placing a cask of rum in position. The spirits caught alight, and the blaze threatened to destroy the primitive hotel, until ‘Scrammy-handed Ned’ extinguished it by the use of blankets and bedding.

Ann took over the Victoria Inn, keeping her license until 1857 when it was not renewed on the grounds of their having supplied Aboriginal natives with rum. After a public outcry and appeals to the Governor, her licence was reinstated in September that same year.

In late 1848 she moved the Victoria Inn to a new building very substantially built of brick and contains three parlours, five bedrooms and servants' rooms, tap-room and spacious bar, store room and pantry, with detached kitchen with a six-stall stable, wash-houses, stockyard, cow bails, calf pens, sties and...every convenience required. This was reportedly the first brick building erected in Bega. It still stands today (although substantially altered).

Ann White’s Victoria Inn effectively became the town’s civic centre – church services, auctions, meetings were held there, a room was used by the Commercial Bank whilst its own building was being constructed just down the road, and it served for a time as Bega’s Court House.

In 1876 Ann sold the Victoria Inn and by 1879 was operating the Tathra Hotel.

Ann was well-known for her kindness. The good lady's legitimate income was often overdrawn in consequence of years of open-handed hospitality to the poor and needy…and it is well-known that no poor wayfarer was ever turned away from the door by the kind old lady.

After a good yet hard life, Ann died in 1888, age 81.