Fifty years ago former Olympian, Commonwealth Games medallist and the first Australian to swim the English Channel Linda McGill opened new $25,000 extensions, including a sauna bath and gymnasium at the Wagga Leagues Club.

The Wagga Leagues Club was a very important part of Wagga’s social scene 50 years ago.

More than 8,000 people in the Wagga Civic Centre Gardens saw Miss Annette McNamara, a 19 year old program secretary at the Wagga television station RVN-2 crowned Miss Wagga 1968.

The first Children’s Ward at the Wagga District Hospital was completed in 1922 after a fund-raising campaign was begun in 1919. 

The Dunlop Factory at the corner of Murray and Forsyth Streets opened in Wagga in 1943 during World War II.  Originally it was used as a munitions factory, making fuses for the military but it later made military uniforms.

Matron Betty Toohey at the Uranquinty Migrant Centre hospital on June 22, 1949, with baby, Peter Dimitriewicz, the first baby born at the centre. Picture: Sherry Morris

Wagga’s Victory Memorial Gardens including a Nativity Scene in a photo probably taken from the six story Council administration building built in 1967 adjacent to the historic Council Chambers and demolished in 1999 to be replaced by the present day civic centre.

The Wagga to Tumbarumba rail line opened in stages between 1917 and 1921. This is the last train on the line in 1974. Picture: Geoff Haddon

Pictured here are co-owners of the new Kooringal Hotel Motel Mr John Jackson and Mr Bill Cosier which was opened 50 years ago in 1967.

Federal Coach Factory in Fitzmaurice Street. AF Hely sold the business to J Parsons and Sons in 1905 and Parsons sold the business in 1912. Picture: Sherry Morris Collection