Moss Vale

From Throsby Park to a railway town

Before Moss Vale became a railway town, estates shaped the country around it. John and Mary Waite’s Browley holding began with a grant in 1819 and grew into a large property with a brick barn for grain and shearing. Later owners subdivided its land into rural and town allotments.^[48]

By 1850, Throsby Park and adjoining estates dominated the district. When town plots went on sale in 1863 ahead of the railway, a new settlement began to gather beside the line. The railway from Sydney arrived in December 1867, bringing workers and their families; by the station’s opening there was already a store, postal service and hotel. Lewis Levy of Berrima was remembered as the first storekeeper, and subdivision from Throsby Park helped give the town its start.^[32]

The line made Moss Vale the freight doorway for the farming districts opening up at Robertson, Burrawang and Wilde’s Meadow. Produce, market-garden crops and rural supplies moved between the Highlands and Sydney, while the name Moss Vale preserved the memory of Jemmy Moss, a former convict servant of Charles Throsby.^[32]

Moss Vale station itself grew with the town. The first platform building dates from 1868, followed by a refreshment room in 1890 and a booking and parcels office in 1915. A carriage shed for the Governor’s carriage appeared in 1884, and a vice-regal entrance and waiting room in 1889 after the government acquired a nearby summer residence. The Society’s account notes uncertainty about who built the original station building.^[55]

Postal services followed the shifting centre of the new town. The first post office opened in James Clifford’s building at Argyle and Waite streets in December 1867, then moved between store and station premises before the purpose-built post and telegraph office opened in 1891. Debate over its railway-side site showed that residents already held different ideas about where Moss Vale should grow. The Society later printed a correction to its postal-history account.^[44]

Inns, workshops and the making of a town centre

Travellers arriving by rail or coach found a town of inns. John Cullen’s Terminus Hotel became the Royal in 1880, while his brother James opened the Family Hotel at Argyle and Valetta streets in 1879. The Family Hotel became the booking office for the Moss Vale-Nowra coach in 1881, then lived on as Buena Vista Guest House before its demolition in 1940.^[47]

Workshops soon joined the hotels and stores. James McCleery established a blacksmith and coachbuilding business at Argyle and Valetta streets in 1883, with the family’s Rosebank home nearby. His sons continued the work, including wartime tool-cart contracts and a 1915 war-fund demonstration in which workers built a sulky; after a fire in 1919, the premises also became part of Cliff Howard’s story and his rotary hoe.^[51][52]

The 1880s brought new pieces to the town’s public life. The first Berrima District Show was held in March 1884 on ground at Burrawang and Old South roads, chosen after P. H. Throsby offered alternative sites. The society later bought the showground, expanded its buildings and saw it serve as a military camp during the Second World War.^[59][60]

Land sales advertised the promise of the growing district. In October 1895, D. Clifford offered the old football ground by Waite’s Creek and allotments fronting Argyle and Elizabeth streets, while nearby Manchester Square farms were promoted for their proximity to Moss Vale and its butter factory. An 1886 Oliver S. Throsby estate auction also mapped suburban lots near Throsby Park, with roads, payment terms and a locality sketch.^[64][65][66]

The State Library’s surviving subdivision plans keep this changing land market visible: its catalogue includes a Moss Vale township plan dated 12 February 1881 (Z/TP/M5/48) and a Glorigan Hill Estate plan dated 24 November 1917 (Z/TP/M5/49).^[40]

Individual homes tell the same story at a smaller scale. Emira on Narellan Road grew from Throsby Park land and appeared on the 1917 Glorigan Hill Estate sale plan. Hazelton, on the southern edge of town, began as a boarding establishment after the 1882 Bull’s Hill subdivision, later housed a girls’ school and returned to guest-house use before Clara de Mestre acquired it in 1926.^[38][45][57]

Civic life also had its public figures. Hotelkeeper and councillor Henry William Taylor, later president of Wingecarribee Shire Council, became district coroner in 1910 after an appointment that provoked debate in the NSW Parliament. He remained in the role until illness led to his retirement in 1922.^[49]

Fountains, schools and community life

At Bay and Argyle streets, Moss Vale marked Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 with a fountain of Bowral trachyte. In 1938 the Alcorn Memorial Clock, honouring local doctor John Alcorn, was placed above it. Traffic later separated the two landmarks: the fountain moved in the late 1970s and was restored in Diamond Jubilee Park, while the clock remained.^[35][58]

Water and learning changed everyday life as much as the railway did. A timber stave pipe found in Suttor Road in 2006 recalled an earlier water system; its exact age and use remain uncertain, and records describe cast-iron pipes for the town’s 1894 reticulation. Moss Vale’s School of Arts served as a meeting place and lending library. Its Argyle Street building remained the library until 1971, before the regional library service brought Moss Vale together with Bowral and Mittagong.^[50][61]

School memories give the town a more intimate voice. Former Koyong pupils remembered Miss Mein, school gardens, performances and the girls’ involvement in local organisations. The Civic Centre’s own story began with Katherine Donkin’s postwar gift of a house for a community centre, followed by land gifts and fundraising; local groups helped open a swimming pool in 1965, and Council moved into the Civic Centre in 1971.^[37][41]

Sport bound the district together as well. The first Bong Bong Picnic Race meeting took place on Throsby Park land at Moss Vale in 1887. Its course later moved near the Briars Inn and then to Burradoo before the event was revived at Wyeera in 1959. A small gold-and-seed-pearl pin marked ‘Bong Bong 1890’ is likely to have been the second prize in the Wingecarribee Plate, won by Ripple.^[42][56]

The railway’s growth also reshaped the town’s public buildings. The Society records that a court and police precinct was built near the station in 1880, then demolished to make room for railway expansion during duplication. Courts met in temporary premises while the town waited for a replacement. The foundation stone for a new courthouse was laid in June 1923, and the building opened the following year.^[71]

Service, industry and a town through the twentieth century

Moss Vale’s medical history includes doctors, nurses and hospitals from the mid nineteenth century onward, with the former Garryowen hospital site one thread in that story. During the First World War, The Mill became a convalescent home for recovering servicemen, alongside Fairholme at Burradoo and the Southern Home at Exeter, where Red Cross volunteers gave care.^[36][53][54]

The war also left a public landmark. Moss Vale’s soldiers’ memorial was unveiled on 8 January 1922 after a local campaign, on land at Argyle Street and Yarrawa Road given by Violet Bennett.^[46]

Dairying tied the town to farms across the Southern Highlands. Contemporary newspapers reported that Dairy Farmers opened its Lackey’s Road factory on 27 September 1922, receiving milk from Robertson, Wildes Meadow, Exeter and Bundanoon for dispatch to Sydney or separation into butter. Later pasteurising, bottling and bulk collection followed, before road tankers took milk directly to Sydney from 1992; the former factory site became a retail centre. A later Society account gave 22 October as the opening date; contemporary reports support 27 September.^{[62][67][68][69][70]}

The town’s commercial life continued to evolve. The local credit union bought a cottage at 226 Argyle Street in 1972, added the adjoining 224 property and opened replacement administrative offices in 1980. On a more personal scale, John McColgan remembered Depression-era Moss Vale from his parents’ grocery opposite the clock, including Wirths Circus elephants in the main street, the picture theatre and music for local dances.^[43][63]

Moss Vale’s influence also travelled beyond its streets. A weatherboard cottage from 33 Railway Street was donated by Frank Lansley in 1975, moved to Berrima that December, opened to visitors in December 1976 and officially opened in March 1977 as the Society’s museum.^[39]

A continuing record of Moss Vale

The Society’s Research Centre and Archives at the Civic Centre in Elizabeth Street is a place to follow Moss Vale’s stories further. Wingecarribee Public Library’s separate archives collection also holds council minutes, cash books, rate and valuation records, burial registers and an infectious-diseases register: working records behind many future local discoveries.^[33][34]

From the early railway and its busy station to dairying, show days, schools, gardens, workshops and changing main streets, Moss Vale grew as a meeting point between the Highlands’ farms and the wider world. Its history is most vivid when those broad connections are seen through the people, buildings and small public places that still give the town its character.^[32]