Goods Shed Flooring

The goods shed at Bombala Railway Station is a corrugated iron structure, built in 1921 as part of the station complex at the terminus of the Goulburn-Bombala branch line. Its floor is grain-split timber plank, laid for a working building that needed to take punishment: heavy crates, loaded trolleys, decades of boots. In 2016, that floor looked like it had taken all of it. The boards are split and worn back to bare grain, their surface long stripped of any finish, the timber itself still solid in places but failing in others. Volunteers maintaining the precinct estimate $150,000 to re-stump and re-floor the building. That number sits over the space like a question. Bombala Railway Station opened for passenger services on 21 November 1921, the end point of a branch line that had been pushing south from Joppa Junction since 1884. The goods shed was part of the original construction, built to handle the primary cargo of the Monaro tablelands: wool, beef cattle, superphosphate, tractors, harvesters. The station was operated by NSW Government Railways and served the pastoral communities of the region for 65 years. On 26 March 1986, the last train visited, 3 CPH railmotors, and the station closed. The branch line was officially shut in May 1989 after the Numeralla River bridge at Chakola was declared unsafe. The station is now listed on the NSW State Heritage Register, gazetted 2 April 1999. Heritage NSW assessed it as one of the most intact country terminus sites surviving from the railway expansion period of around 1920. The goods shed, with its corrugated iron walls and timber floor, is part of that assessment. Friends of Bombala Railway have maintained the precinct through volunteer effort and community fundraising, keeping the buildings from becoming ruins. This photograph records the floor as it stood in 2016: boards worn to grain with fasteners standing proud where they have shifted, pale light coming across them from one side, a red wooden press and a small handcart against the corrugated iron wall. The shed still stands. The floor is still there. The $150,000 is still needed.