NSWRail & telegraph
Faulconbridge
A premier’s weekend retreat put a new name on the mountain railway.
1877Faulconbridge stop on the timetable
WHAT STARTED IT
The railway made the lower Blue Mountains reachable from Sydney, and Henry Parkes bought a large block of untouched bush beside the line in the mid-1870s for a weekend home. He named it Faulconbridge, his mother’s maiden name, and a stop of that name appears in the railway timetable by April 1877.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
By 1879 a small village of workers’ cottages was growing around Parkes’s house, and other leading colonists were building mountain retreats nearby. Parkes was buried at Faulconbridge beside his first wife in 1896.
TURNING POINTS
1877Faulconbridge appears between Springwood and Numantia in the railway timetable.
1879A newspaper reports ‘a little village is arising’ around Parkes’s home.
1896Parkes is buried at Faulconbridge beside his first wife.
1947Prime Minister Ben Chifley plants an oak in the avenue opposite Faulconbridge House.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A Blue Mountains village of about 4,200 people. Opposite Parkes’s old house, the Prime Ministers’ Corridor of Oaks holds trees planted by Australian prime ministers.