Museum
Museum depicting early rail and tramsways of the Southern Shoalhaven region.
Southern Shoalhaven area from 1840 onwards
- Dioramas of timber tramways, lumber mills and ports:
- Working model of the Light Railway moving silica 8 Kilometres from Pattimores Lagoon quarry across Narrawallee Inlet to Bannister Head wharf in 1925 plus actual silica truck, track, sleepers, silica lumps & brick from 100 years ago;
- Six operating trains dating back almost 100 years with a clockwork metal train from 1930s and a three rail JEP Salt Box loco from Paris 1929 – 31;
- Information and Photos depicting the early industrial tramways at Bendalong, Ulladulla, Wandandian, Bawlwy Point and Kiola and workers involved;
- Display cabinets include vintage pressed metal and electric trains from Australia, England, America and Japan;
- Train memorabilia mostly from the NSWGR era.
New Museum Dioramas depicting early rail and tramways of the Ulladulla region.
As the dioramas are quite large it has been necessary to ‘stitch images’ together, thus large panorama views may have a little distortion. Hopefully you can appreciate the expert modelling techniques used when viewing the individual scene images.
These are beautiful model renditions of our history & times gone bye.
1. Lake Conjola to Bendalong Timber Tramway
A logging operation that saw the horse drawn timber tramway transport logs from the deeper water at Chinamans Island across a bridge to Boat Harbour lumber mill at Bendalong. Once processed it would be shipped to Sydney.
Conjola-Bendalong timber tramway
2. Pattimores Lagoon to Bannisters Head Silica Railway
Constructed to support the mining of silica from Pattimores Lagoon and rail transport over 8 klms across Narrawallee inlet to the Bannister Head wharf for shipping silica to Newcastle and Port Kembla to make high temperature refractory bricks for steel works.. The diorama covers 2 large floor sections, thus 2 panorama images were needed. (NB: – with the display bending around corners….it was a photographic challenge!).
Bannister Head end of the Silica Railway
Pattimores Lagoon Silica mining
3. Flat Rock Timber Mill & Tramway
A unique aspect of the timber tramway was a winch system on a truck pulling logs on a trolley up a very steep hill. The logs were milled at Flat Rock lumber mill then taken to Termeil by horse hauled road jinkers and in turn, via horse drawn tram-line trolley to Bawley Point followed by shipping to Sydney by coastal traders.
