Wool Press

The wool press at Bombala Railway Station is not original to the site. It came from a nearby community woolshed, donated when a newer facility was built to replace it. The machine is approximately 135 years old, which puts its manufacture well before the station existed. Donated alongside it were bale-weighing scales and stone sharpening wheels, the working inventory of a pastoral industry that shaped this corner of the southern Monaro tablelands for generations. The station precinct opened on 21 November 1921 as the terminus of the Goulburn-Bombala line, the final leg of a branch network that had been pushing south from Joppa Junction since 1884. That 37-year push ended here, in a town whose economy revolved around sheep farming. Wool was among the primary cargo the line was built to carry out, along with beef cattle. Superphosphate, tractors, and harvesters came in the other direction. The station building is a Type 11 pre-cast concrete structure, one of approximately 140 built across regional NSW between 1919 and 1932 under a standardised NSWGR design. Heritage NSW has described it as one of the best pre-cast concrete structures to survive in the state. The yard extends approximately 900 metres and remains largely intact, including the signal box, goods shed, timber footbridge, gantry crane, weighbridge hut, and turntable pit. The station closed on 26 March 1986. The branch line followed in May 1989, after the Numeralla River bridge at Chakola was declared unsafe. The wool press now sits within a precinct maintained by the Friends of Bombala Railway as a heritage museum and community site. It was photographed in 2016, three decades after the last train. The machine records, in iron and timber, the industry the station existed to serve.