Built by Eliza and William Minogue, who came from County Cork in Ireland, Tara was named after the ancient home of the kings of County Meath (3200 BC) in Ireland.

Tara is listed along with other historic houses of Wentworth in 'Maud’s Book of Houses'. Maud Crang is a long time Wentworth resident (her father was an accountant in Wentworth for 40 or 50 years). Maud knew all three generations of the descendants of the Minogues.
According to Maud: The first auction of town blocks was 1860 and the name of William Minogue shows on an old map for the east Darling Lots 56, 57 and 58. In the first rate book, 1879, Eliza Minogue is shown as the owner of Lots 56 and 57 (see more recent map below) with cottage and garden etc, valued at 50 pounds, a high valuation for 1879.

In the 1870s the Minogues built a large separate kitchen with a brick baking oven, and some time in the next 20 years, added three other main rooms, and at the beginning of the next century, a shade house made from the river bamboos.

Over the first 50 years they planted an extensive European garden with deciduous fruit trees, olives and a mulberry tree, shrubs and a large vegetable patch with water drawn from the Darling river, initially by a winch.

Jean Roper (nee Loomes) remembers the big garden and the wide open spaces at Tara.
They had a penny farthing bike, they milked the cows and had fresh vegetables. A Chinese gardener, with a pig tail, frightening to the children, rented part of the property. There was all the fruit in the world - pomegranates, persimmons, oranges, apples, pears, grapes, peaches, loquats and plums - everything you could think of. The big old kitchen at Tara always stays in my mind. It was a lovely place. The fire always going and the kettle boiling. It was wonderful after living in a city.

Selina Quilty recalls that in the kitchen there was a picture of Disraeli and Gladstone or Pitt the younger - not sure which - having afternoon tea with Queen Victoria.

John Ford recalls that he used to sit up in the loquat tree and gorge myself. The vines had a lady finger grape which was very long and I have not seen any like it since.
Uncle Bern on Guy Fawkes day always had a bonfire just below the figtree, which from memory was 30 foot in diameter. He often rigged up a dummy in an old cane chair and it used to move and he’d scare the hell out of us kids. I think he had a string attached to it & it moved. And then it was put on the fire. I think he called it Madam Cuttysark.

The building today has almost completely fallen down (the photos to the right were taken in 1975), and the land is owned by Anne and Steve Hederics, both artists and who have developed an artists’ workshop and creative centre there (Artback Adventures), with for friends and guests who come to work by the river.