Johns River

Signal House, From Graeme Skeet's Gallery on the NSW Rail website

1915-1982

In 1891 a Railway Reserve was notified over an extensive area, and in 1906 land was resumed for the purpose of the North Coast Railway line.

Work commenced in the area in 1909 and proceeded through until 1915 when the section from Taree to Wauchope was opened. Maltese workers were employed in the construction of the line and camped in the area behind the Recreation Reserve.

The steel for the line was brought across the lake by the puntman Reg French on the punt named Samuel French.  It was off loaded and dragged up to the dumps by Jack Kidd’s bullock teams.

Extract from The Forge by Sid Tiedman:

"……no earth moving equipment or mechanical machines were used at all. The work was all done by ‘navvies’ using picks and shovels – the clay shoveled into half cubic yard tip-drays drawn by two draught horses, as one horse could not pull a loaded dray in the conditions that prevailed. There were literally thousands of men employed, and the clay in the cuttings was first torn up with a huge single furrow plough drawn by a bullock team.

The North Coast Railway construction (at Deep Creek, Nambucca), c 1919

"One gang of 30-odd Maltese were camped less than a quarter of a mile from the Smithy where I worked.  Construction trains were using the line as early as 1914. Vast quantities of railway sleepers were required and sleeper cutting was a big industry from 1911 onwards.

"There was an influx of these cutters from Gippsland, Victoria as well as from other districts. Almost all of the men from Gippsland, about 30 in all, were killed in World War I. Fine big strong men they were."

1919 Train coming through

First Officers in charge of the Johns River Railway Station appear to have been W. Hain and R. Waldon, appointed in August, 1935.  Brian Fletcher recalls being told of the camps and ‘hotels / sly grog shops’ at Passionfruit Creek and Ross Glen and how as a  school child he would travel by train to Taree High School. Train travel was used regularly at this time and through until the 1940s.

Yard switch map at Johns River

Dennis Cook of Johns River recalls the Railway Station being a busy place and seeing the trains being loaded with cattle and timber whilst he was at the local school during the 1950s and 1960s, and later on worked for the Railways.