Penrose

Postcode: 2530

Penrose is a small town in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia, in Wingecarribee Shire. It is has a station on the Main Southern railway line served by CityRail's Southern Highlands services. Penrose also has a small general store and cafe, as well as a hardware store.

Its population including nearby Wingello is 295 (Census 2001).

Today, with the advent of the XPT fast train and the decline of small railway stations as transport nodes, the town is on the edge of oblivion. Nearly every house and every business in the town is either for sale or boarded up. This is a far cry from the romantic image of a tiny, quiet village 'nestled amidst towering pine trees, fringed by the State Forest, deep gullies and gorges' which is depicted in A Village Called Penrose written by Lesley Day in 1987.

By the 1890s the town had grown large enough to have its own Methodist Church, post office and police station. It was surveyed in 1895 and plans were made for a village, named after Penrose in Cornwall.

By the 1920s the town was on the edge of the boom created by the fashion of holidaying in the Southern Highlands. 'Edenholme', with views across to Jervis Bay, was opened as a guest house and Mrs Teudt, who ran the guest house, gained a reputation as a superb cook. It was destroyed by fire in the early 1950s.

It was in the 1910s that orchards were planted in the district. During World War I the two sidings were closed and Penrose Railway Station was opened. By the 1930s more guest houses - notably 'Cherry Hinton' and 'Sylvan Glen' - were opened and the fresh country air attracted substantial numbers of visitors from Sydney. But the town had never really created a solid economic base for itself and after World War II, when many people moved to Sydney, it started to decline. Today it is a few houses with little prospect of revitalisation.

For more information about this town, click here