Wodonga Council names parks after pair of saleyards stalwarts and former railways worker

Stella and Archie Nugent, who died in the late 1980s, are set to be recognised in the titles of two open spaces fronting Schipper Street and bisected by Callus Street.

Wodonga Council last week approved the names of those parks and one honouring late railways worker Henry Hine along Lawrence Street east near the former Cudgewa line corridor.

They will become official barring any feedback in the next three weeks.

The Nugents' only child Pat Corcoran, 86, was pleased at the acknowledgement of her parents.

"I think they deserve it; I think it's an honour to have it done and the family do too," she said.

Mrs Corcoran said her daughter Jenny Webb first made the proposal six years ago when the council sought nominations for park names.

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Mr Nugent was the superintendent of Wodonga's saleyards from 1964 to 1976 after having begun work there in the 1940s.

At the time the livestock hub was in the heart of the city on the site of present day Wodonga Plaza.

Mrs Nugent was a telephone exchange operator at the saleyards for 30 years, a demanding role in a pre-digital world.

"They worked with the council for 30 odd years and did a huge job," Mrs Corcoran said.

"That was the biggest stock selling centre between Melbourne and Sydney and a lot of stock went through the yards.

"It was a big industry here."

The Nugents lived in sight of the saleyards in a weatherboard house on Elgin Boulevard on a block now occupied by an Aldi supermarket.

Coincidentally, the couple's park locations are a short distance from where the saleyards were relocated to at Bandiana after shutting in the centre of Wodonga in 1980.

They have since been privatised and shifted to Barnawartha North.

While rapt to have her mother and father recognised, Mrs Corcoran would like the parks, which share a channel, to be made more attractive.

"I'll come regularly if they beautify it a bit, make it a bit more presentable and have somewhere people can come and sit and have another seat," she said.

The Nugents follow former mayors Pam and Les Stone in being a couple with titular parks in Wodonga.

Mr Hine, who was born in 1901 and died in 1978, worked for the Victorian railways from 1926 and settled in Wodonga as a rolling stock repairer in 1945.

He and wife Doris and their five children lived in a railways house on land now home to the Wodonga RSL .

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