DEEPWATER RAILWAY STATION CONSERVATION MANAGEMENT PLAN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY • PAGE 1


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The railway station at Deepwater is a disused railway place. It operated between 1st
\ September 1886 (the day of its opening) until 8th January 1972 (the day of its closure), a period of less than one hundred years. Since that time the place has served the local community as a meeting place, occasional craft studio and FM Radio Station under tenancy arrangements with the Severn Shire Council.

THE BRIEF

The brief to prepare a Conservation Management Plan (CMP) for the entire precinct at Deepwater Railway Station was included in a wider brief to provide project management and architectural services for the restoration of the Railway Station. A copy of the brief is appended at Appendix 2.

The restoration works were completed in November 2001.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE

The basic heritage values of Deepwater Railway Station are well established. In 1993 the place was entered on the Section 170 Heritage and Conservation Register of the State Rail Authority. In 1999 the majority of SRA listings were added to the State Heritage Register following amendment of the Heritage Act.' For reasons that are unclear Deepwater Railway Station was not entered onto the State Heritage  Register, although many less significant railway places were. As far as it can be determined this was an administrative oversight.

The place is listed on the Schedule of Heritage Items on the Severn Shire Local ' Environment Plan as an item of local heritage significance and is therefore on the State Heritage Inventory.

As a result of the process of analysis undertaken in this conservation management study it can be confirmed that Deepwater Railway Station is a place of high
/ significance due to its role in the social and economic development of the locality. It meets criteria for inclusion on the State Heritage Register as an item of local and state significance.
CONSTRAINTS, ISSUES AND OPPORTUNITIES
The most significant issue regarding the ongoing and future conservation of the place is the contemporary socio-economic environment. Being a small place in a small, isolated rural community its future is closely linked to the future of its host community. Consistent with most rural communities the Deepwater community is at best static, and probably in decline. Therefore prospects for the station are limited.

Nevertheless the opportunity exists in 2001 to consolidate a partnership between the community, as represented by the Sevem Shire Council and their committee of
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Foot note:
1/ Heritage Amendment Act 1998. Assented to 8.12.1998. Commenced 2.4.1999. Part 3A State Heritage Register.
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 3.4/ VALUES of the Deepwater Railway Station

The values represented at Deepwater are the traditional, predominantly nineteenthcentury railway values relating to a relatively high standard of building design and construction in the passenger station, and a massive engineering enterprise that can be seen in the manner in which the railway imposed itself on the landscape.

It is very rare for elements such as timber fencing from the 1880s to survive, in part at least, and it is not hard to imagine how much of an impact the construction of the railway would have had. In an area where Dieback has killed so many of the mature trees it is sobering to recall how much timber was felled for the railway, to construct the track and the fences in addition to the station and yard structures.
The intactness of the passenger station is outstanding. Despite the loss of fittings and furnishings, and the creation of a new opening in the wall between two of the principal rooms, the place is remarkably intact with fine masonry, joinery and
. plasterwork.

Some of the changes at Deepwater have been unfortunate. The loss of the goods shed and stockyards is very unfortunate since it robs the site of an element of complexity that would explain rural railway operations. So too are the losses of stockyards and loading banks, and the signals, unfortunate. There are now very few places in NSW where railway stations remain intact in their complexity. The nearby Tenterfield Railway Station is an exception.

Some of the newly introduced elements are also unfortunate. For example, the massive red and white painted radio mast and adjacent satellite dish are perhaps signs of the times but they are most incongruous in the traditional railway environment. They make the railway story confusing to the uninformed.
Likewise the dense plantings of Australian native species are most un-railway-like and as these modern-day plantings approach maturity they progressively obscure the traditional railway values. Railway sites were barren, no-nonsense places where aesthetics were a sideshow accessible only to the station managers in the declining years when funding for the maintenance of the railway infrastructure for safety and operational reasons took precedence over all other considerations.
Station Master's were encouraged to develop station gardens to take their minds off idleness and to distract from lack of core maintenance to the building infrastructure.

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