Tarro, New South Wales  Tarro is a north-western suburb of the Newcastle City Council local government area in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia. It, and parts of nearby Beresfield, was originally known as Upper Hexham, "lower" Hexham being an older settlement located about to the east on the Hunter River. The name "Tarro" reportedly means "stone" in an Aboriginal language. At the 2006 census, Tarro had a population of 1,558, almost all of which is concentrated in the south-western corner of the suburb. Tarro and the adjacent suburbs of Beresfield, Woodberry and Thornton are situated on low ridges rising out of the surrounding floodplain (and wetlands) of the Hunter River. Early Tarro compromised a number of scattered farms which made use of the surrounding wetlands. Housing was otherwise strung out along Maitland Road (then the New England Highway, now Anderson Drive) between the railway station in the east to what was to become Beresfield in the west. After World War II, Tarro became increasingly suburban. The area bounded by Eastern, Western and Southern Avenues was subdivided. This was followed by land between Christie Road and Maitland Road, then in the late 1960s-1970s land between Western Avenue and Christie Road and then behind the Tarro Hotel. In mid-1980s land between Christie Road and Beresfield was sold off to L.J Hooker, then known as Hooker Homes, where more residential homes were built, all following the same basic design. Modern Tarro includes a section of the Hunter River, located in the eastern and southeastern parts of the suburb. The suburb extends along the Hunter River in the southeast to the Hexham bridges, where it meets the suburb of Kooragang. Despite their name, the Hexham bridges are actually located in Tarro, the southbound bridge forming the border between Tarro and Kooragang. The southern and northern approaches to the bridges, on the Pacific Highway, are in Hexham and Tomago respectively. The area where Tarro is located originally was part of the territory of the Pambalong clan of the Awabakal people. The land of the Pambalong stretched from Newcastle West, extended along the southern bank of the Hunter River, west through Hexham (Tarro) to Buttai and across to the foothills of Keeba-Keeba (Mount Sugarloaf) to the northern tip of Lake Macquarie and back to Newcastle West.