While reading on Wikipedia about the Cockle Creek railway platform, I found a mention of a private rail service from Cockle Creek to West Wallsend, Seahampton, Killingworth, Barnsley, and the now vanished town of Fairley.
The Wikipedia article for West Wallsend has the details. According to it, the Fairley (aka Seaham No.2 Colliery) train junction was created in 1887-8, and closed in 1938. I’ve not as yet found any other substantial details about Fairley. The Geographical Names Board locates it at S 32° 54′ 54″ E151° 33′ 04″, and says the Town officially ceased to be in mid 1991. The Gregorys Road Atlas shows a Fairley Road and a First Street just on the other side of the F3 Freeway from West Wallsend. Google Maps shows even more, with 10 or so roads in the area, and over 100 housing lots surveyed. The Department of Lands was not quite so generous, but still shows planned lots in their GIS viewer.
Fairley in Google Maps
Fairley according to the Department of Lands
Access to Fairley today is along Boundary Road from West Wallsend. However, the (old) maps showed that Earl Street in Homesville used to be along the primary route to Fairley, so that’s where I visited first. I’m guessing there must have been a bridge, and if you look closely, you can see the old ‘Give Way’ sign in the second photo facing towards the reserve…
Boundary Road connects to Railway Street in West Wallsend… and there’s a good reason why– as the road follows one of the collery railway line extensions. This former platform isn’t on the line going to Fairley, though. The second photo is looking in the direction of the obscured start of Fairley Road.
Fairley Road becomes an underpass to the F3 Freeway. This was the only section of the dirt road which had been sealed, and that was done rather recently.
On arriving at Fairley, approximately where Fairley Road and First Street are on the maps above, I saw muddy trailbiked trails, and unmaintained and shoddy barb-wire fencing.. There were a few signs in the trees about “KEEP OUT .. LEAVE MY STOCK ALONE ..” but I suspect it’s another Dickhead farmer claiming adjoining land as his own and illegally installing fences across Crown Land again.
This is (or would have been) “First Street”, looking up the hill to the north. The condition of the trail is poorer than it appears…
This is looking west along “Lawson Avenue”
From its location and how it was set on a raised embankment, I’m guessing this is the remains of a railway platform, near to the siding/junction at the south of the town.
What makes me think there must have been some actual settlement in the area was this overgrown garden, with its non-native plants.
Also, between “First” and “Second” street was this conspicuous area, which had been cleared of trees some time ago and rendered relatively level (for temporary housing..?), but now had been reclaimed by trees all less than ~40 years old. However, I could not find any history of established residences– foundations, concrete, scrap iron, worked wood, or the like.
Something far more evidential was this pathway (approximately from the “Esplanade” to “Second Street”) made with crushed coal, and with railway artifacts embedded in it!
The Dam south of Fairley. It’s a sizable entirely-earth dam, without the concrete or fixtures like the Burrenjim dam that was built in 1946.
Now this makes me think that the land lots indicated on the maps were relatively recent– a (10-20 year old?) surveyor’s peg.
What is Fairley’s story? The survey details that Google and the Dept of Lands provides may have been an abandoned housing development, possibly during the early 1970s when the State Government was “doing a Bjelke-Petersen” and rubber-stamping anything it was given. However no council services such as water, sewerage, electricity, or their preparations were evident, and the access via Fairley Road was never sealed or otherwise treated, so there was unlikely to have been a sizable population in the town. There is a large dam, that I expect was from the mining period and used primarily for the collery. The “garden” is evidence of a settlement in the area, although the lack of any significant human impact makes me think it was the temporary lean-toos and shanty accommodation popular with the mining community in Lake Macquarie.
Yes, I was hoping to find a number of abandoned 1940s-era houses in the middle of the bush. :-)