Hill Top

A railway camp and a village

Before Hill Top became a named station, Rocky Waterholes was a railway construction camp. Frank Mitchell’s newspaper research and Philip Morton’s Society account describe the dangerous work at Big Hill cutting in 1863, including a fatal blasting accident, the contractors’ insolvency and the ensuing claims for unpaid wages. Their linked Trove list brings the contemporary reports together for closer examination.^[15][16]

A Society history reproduced in council heritage papers describes a station opening at Big Hill Upper Siding in 1878, later named Hill Top. Extra locomotives assisted trains up the steep grade from the lower siding, later Balmoral. Railway workers and land subdivisions helped shape the communities around the two stations.^[13]

The upper settlement around the station was first known as Jellore. A railway history reproduced in the Council heritage evidence sheets distinguishes it from the lower village at Balmoral; both grew around the railway and nearby subdivisions. Jellore is another name to try in early land, railway and family records.^[18]

The former railway alignment is a significant part of the northern villages’ history. A Society tour description identifies the Wilson Drive route from Colo Vale to Hill Top with the original railway line and includes the Big Hill cutting.^[11][12]

The Society’s 2016 tour report describes the Big Hill railway cutting, excavated using hand tools and explosives in the 1860s. It also identifies a concrete sculpture near the cutting, erected in 1980 and attributed in the report to Simon Joe Enfield, as a memorial to human endeavour.^[11]

The same history says Hill Top School opened in 1883. In 1886, nine children from Balmoral were attending it when local residents sought a school nearer home. Those school names and dates offer a useful starting point for checking admissions registers and education files.^[13]

A changing railway

Council’s geographic history records that Hill Top and Colo Vale were bypassed by a new Southern Railway alignment in 1919. It dates their growth since the 1980s to settlement by commuters working in Sydney. This gives the village a clearly documented transport history: the old line’s local role changed when the main route moved, and later road-and-rail access supported new residential growth. Council’s current resilience planning places Hill Top among the northern villages.^[9][10]

Hill Top’s railway also served families beyond the village. In a 2018 property-history enquiry, Carolyn Dougherty located the former Echo Vale property in the Nattai wilderness north-west of Hill Top and drew on historical maps, photographs and local knowledge. Her account describes the old route now called Starlight’s Trail as a way that the family moved stock and produce towards Hill Top or Balmoral stations. The surviving photographs and maps offer leads for further research into this remote valley.^[17]

In December 1928 a DH Moth flying from Richmond towards Melbourne ran into fog near Hill Top and struck trees in Blackguard Gully. A Mittagong Star account reproduced by the Society describes residents and a doctor reaching one injured airman and carrying him through rough country on a stretcher made from bags and saplings. It is a small but vivid story of neighbours helping in an emergency.^[19]