St Marys

Not a lot of photos from here, because we just stopped to post something and get a milkshake.

Settlements were established in the Fingal Valley in the 1820s and 1830s for mining and farming, but access was unreliable due to flooding and there’s not much point mining and farming if you can’t get goods out (or in). So the government decided to build a pass through the mountains to connect the valley to the coast. In the early 1840s, a probation station was built near here, and another one on the coastal side and, from memory, about 400 men put to work building St Marys Pass. In the years that followed, a settlement grew up at the base of the mountains and eventually became a town that took its name from the nearby pass. In 1857, the tourist information kiosk in the photo says.

St Marys is the main service town in the area (even if they didn’t have a functioning ATM) so there’s a range of shops, pharmacy, post office, community services etc.

I think that green place looks like an former bank building.

On the other side of the road.

St Marys Hotel is obviously a visually dominant building. It’s also some typical features of Federation-style architecture: red bricks with white trim, wooden verandah, low roofline (compared to earlier styles) and low gables on the ends/corner (with a common vertical line pattern).

“Don’t leave the car there.”
“Why not?”
…

St Marys railway station, which is built on the same plan as Fingal’s but with a green car in front of it apparently less altered.

We’re facing back into the town here (the hotel is on the left), but if we were facing the other way, we’d be heading towards St Marys Pass and then north.