Jincumbilly Station

The Jincumbilly sign stands to the left of a small weathered building, its yellow facade stained with age and the corrugated iron roof furred with moss and lichen. A timber platform runs along the front. Rolling hills stretch out beneath a wide, partly cloudy sky. Photographed on the afternoon of 27 December 2018, on the Nikon D850.

Jincumbilly siding opened on 21 November 1921 with the extension of the railway from Cooma to Bombala. It served the surrounding pastoral district on the ordinary terms of a Monaro branch line: wool out, superphosphate, tractors and harvesters in. Graziers here were still consigning sheep to the Homebush saleyards in June 1938. The siding closed on 9 March 1975, and the line south of Cooma closed entirely on 26 March 1986. What survives is unusually complete for a small stop: a platform of roughly 120 metres, truncated at one end, the louvred timber waiting shelter on the down side, a loop siding and sheep yards, and two louvred goods wagons with their bogies removed and grounded for re-use as farm sheds. The water tank has gone. The sign is faded but still legible. All of it stands on a working rural property, in country that has been grazed since the 1830s.