Alpine

The old road and Forest Lodge

Forest Lodge is one of Alpine’s surviving links with the early southern-road landscape. Transport NSW’s illustrated highway history dates the building to about 1834, and Council’s Northern Villages history also illustrates it as a local landmark. The building belongs to an older layer of settlement than the railway-era villages that later grew nearby.^[5][6]

A Society account of a museum piano follows the family of George and Emma Martin to Forest Lodge, a property at what is now Alpine, purchased in 1865. The article also demonstrates how a family story about an object can be revised by checking shipping and maker’s records.^[8]

The Old Hume Highway guide records that the locality was once known as Forest Hill and links the Alpine name to J. H. Kerslake’s orchard. It describes an Alpine Estate advertised by Rickard & Co in 1904, offering blocks for health and profit and promoting the district’s elevation, rainfall and soil. The original advertisement and subdivision plan remain to be located; the guide is evidence of the reported offering rather than the sale of individual blocks.^[9]

The Old South Road and later highway trace different phases of travel through Alpine. The highway guide associates the older route with land farmed by William Jamieson Sherwin, a locally connected medical practitioner. As with Forest Lodge and the railway works, individual properties and their boundaries need to be checked against maps and land records.^[9]

Railway and later records

The railway’s Southern Deviation added another layer to the landscape. The highway guide describes a temporary settlement of workers and families during construction of Alpine Tunnel, and records that lives were lost in the work. Ventilation chimneys in the paddocks above the tunnel are physical reminders of the steam-era railway below.^[9]

Family records offer another scale of history. The Australian Defence Force Academy’s AIF Project records Alpine, Mittagong as the address of labourer David John Dadd when he enlisted in May 1916. He embarked in November and returned to Australia in June 1919. That entry is a specific research lead into one person’s life; tracing his residence and family connections would require the service file and local records.^[7]

The 1923 and 1942 editions of the Parish of Colo map provide regional context for the Alpine area, including the southern railway, road routes, numbered portions and neighbouring settlements. The 1923 copy carries later manuscript annotations. Identify a particular property against its deposited plan and title before drawing conclusions about its history.^[10]