Taree

Distinguished and Famous people from Taree

🏉 Danny Buderus

Danny Buderus's rugby league began at Taree before the Newcastle Knights gave him his first-grade opportunity in 1997. He developed into a leading hooker, playing a major role in the club's golden period and later captaining New South Wales and Australia. His career included Newcastle, Leeds and repeated representative selection, followed by NRL Hall of Fame recognition in 2019. Taree remained the beginning of that pathway, through birth and junior sport. It is a direct local connection behind a player whose later leadership became familiar across the rugby league world.

🎾 Kasey Brown

Taree-born Kasey Brown made her mark in squash through junior titles, the Australian championship and international medals. Her Delhi Commonwealth Games debut in 2010 produced an unusually varied haul: mixed doubles gold, women's doubles bronze and singles bronze. Another mixed doubles bronze at Glasgow brought her Commonwealth Games total to four. Her story gives the town a connection with a demanding indoor racquet sport, where speed and control must be sustained through repeated exchanges and, in doubles, closely coordinated partnerships.

🧶 Uncle Russell Saunders

Uncle Russell Saunders has shared Biripi culture, Gathang language and art with generations of local students. Raised at Taree, he has worked as an artist, pastor, teacher and youth mentor, including as an Elder in Residence at Taree High School. His work also extends to other local schools and on-Country learning. Earlier records of his ceramics and travelling school tuition show that this educational role developed over many years. The town's connection is sustained community life, with creative work and cultural knowledge passed on through personal teaching and local institutions.

📖 Ella Simon

Ella Simon grew up with her grandparents at Purfleet, near Taree, and later returned as a determined community advocate. She worked to improve conditions on the Aboriginal reserve and challenged its management over the treatment of residents. Her concerns included everyday necessities: she once demanded that government funds be spent on stoves. She also started a Country Women’s Association branch and became a Justice of the Peace. Through My Eyes, her autobiography published in 1978, exposed the unfair treatment she had experienced and witnessed. Public leadership, in her case, included both telling a wider story and insisting that practical promises were kept.