Dunmore Bridge, at Woodville, will be opened at 3pm ahead of the weekend’s bicentenary celebrations.

The state government provided $6.7million to complete the upgrade, which started in October last year.

Dunmore Bridge was built in 1899 and is one of only three remaining Allan Truss Road Bridges in NSW.

“We’re going all out to celebrate our 200th anniversary because we’re proud of our unique place in the region’s heritage and think it deserves to be more widely shared and known,” Woodville School of Arts publicity officer Bob Beale said.

“Woodville is largely a forgotten gem in the Hunter’s history. In fact, this year is also the bicentenary of free settlement and of farming for the whole Hunter region and beyond into the rest of mainland Australia, because Woodville is where it all started. Also of interest is that Les Darcy was born here.”

It is believed the Maitland boxing champion was born in a sulky next door to the Woodville School of Arts hall.

John Tucker, then aged 16 years, arrived in Albion Park in 1812 to set up the first farm outside the penal colony of Newcastle.

“Our key pioneer was John Tucker junior, who was the son of convicts and born in Sydney in 1795,” Mr Beale said. 

“He was 16 when he came here, uneducated, unsupported, far from the tiny penal colony and working with simple hand tools. Yet he was sending wheat and maize to Newcastle and Sydney within two years.”

Tucker’s first bride drowned in the Hunter estuary just days after their wedding. His second wedding was the first marriage ceremony to be conducted in the first church in Newcastle.

“He had nine children, has many thousands of descendants and his farm is known as Albion Farm, which today is one of Australia’s outstanding show-piece private gardens.”

Woodville’s bicentenary weekend celebrations will include a living history exhibition, a local history talk, a guided history walk and an auction of colonial art and historic memorabilia. For more information visit http://artswoodville.webs.com.