Vintage machinery group wins heritage award

The Moruya Antique Tractor and Machinery Association has been awarded the inaugural Fergus Thomson OAM Heritage Award.

Presented to MATAMA president Steve Shields, the award recognises the association’s outstanding contribution to Eurobodalla’s rich history and heritage. Nominations were opened in September 2019 for the inaugural Fergus Thomson OAM Heritage Award, which recognises projects contributing to the community’s appreciation and awareness of Eurobodalla’s heritage. The award offers a $1,000 prize to local individuals, groups or organisations that have made an outstanding contribution to our appreciation and awareness of the rich heritage of the Eurobodalla Shire. The initial requirement to nominate required that projects must have been completed in the past two years to be eligible. This years award was in recognition of MATAMA'S biannual Rally, which took place in October 2019

Other finalists for the award included historian and author Shirley Jurmann and Peter Smith – best known for writing The Clarke Gang - Outlawed, Outcast and Forgotten, published on 1st May 2015. The Beagle nomination, Mr Norm Moore didn't pass the muster of the judging panel this year however his book "The Forgotten History of Louttits Quarry and Construction of Captain Cook's Monument" released in March 2019, stands on its own merits as one of the primary historical records of Moruya and the Eurobodalla of its day and will qualify for nomination in 2021.