Discover Aylmerton

School and rural life before the deviation

Long before the new railway, homes stood along the old southern road. The original part of Aylmerton House was built around 1870 and was later restored and extended.^[9]

A school served the district under several names. It began as Chalkerville Provisional School in 1882, and a building was moved to the corner of the Great Southern Road and Colo Vale Road in 1894. A new classroom opened in 1911. Renamed Aylmerton in 1930, the school moved to Wattle Street in present-day Colo Vale for the freeway bypass in 1985 and resumed the Colo Vale name.^[13]

The school’s changing name followed the changing settlement. In 1930 the earlier Colo Vale School became Aylmerton Public School, a distinction that matters when tracing the children who attended it.^[10]

At Craig Royston, Henrietta Rose brought farming and community life together. Her family settled there in 1913; she worked with dairy herds, trialled crops and grasses, and helped establish an Agricultural Bureau branch and the Aylmerton, Braemar and Colo Vale cooperative in the 1920s. She also supported first-aid and maternal-health education. During the Second World War the property became an evacuee centre.^[14]

A new railway and a village shop

The railway brought a new focus to the district. When the Picton-Mittagong deviation opened in 1919, Aylmerton gained a station. A school had been erected in 1914; a store followed near the station in 1921, and a sawmill provided local work. By 1954 the village had 27 houses and 105 residents.^[7]

The new railway encouraged hopes of a growing village. Aylmerton Park Estate was offered for sale soon after the deviation opened, but heavy rain forced its January 1920 auction to be abandoned after six lots had sold.^[15]

The post office and shop became a meeting place for the village. The Simons family opened their first premises in 1927, but the 1939 bushfires destroyed them. Sydney McFarlane built a replacement. Vera McFarlane ran it from the early 1940s until 1971, followed by her daughter Mavis, until highway works required its demolition in 1979. Family photographs preserve the shop, school and nearby Ravensdale farm in the decades between.^[11]

The fires of 1939 reached homes and livelihoods across the district. Police saved Sid McFarlane’s residence at Ravensdale, but sheds containing building materials and tools burned. The Simons family’s post office and store were also lost and later rebuilt.^[12]

The old road still connects Aylmerton with Braemar, Balaclava and Mittagong. Around Park Avenue, Aylmerton Reserve remains a public place within the village.^[7][8]