In August 1930, the State Government granted Bowral Council £1000 for unemployment relief work. Council employed 20 men each day on rostered shifts to undertake low skilled, labour intensive work.

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Bowral's relief workers were employed in some of the town's most significant projects. In December 1937 a toast for the retiring council listed the following achievements:

While many of these projects are familiar, the beautification of the railway approach remains unheralded.

Bowral Council first raised the beautification scheme with the Railways 1933. It involved transforming a dangerous embankment which ran alongside Station Street into a four-level terraced garden.

The terracing was completed by October 1935. While the Mount Gibraltar scenic road employed workers from around the state, the beautification of the railway approach employed local workers under supervision of Bowral's works committee.

The landscaped terrace effectively manages the steep slope between Station Street and the station entrance and acts as a boundary between the car park and the main road.

The terrace includes four levels of dry- stone trachyte wall, four electric street lamps from 1935 and 18 camellias - first planted in 1935 by the Berrima District Horticulture society.

The selection of camellias as street trees was an inspired choice by the chair of the Horticultural Society, federal politician and proprietor of the district's four newspapers, Hector Lamond.

Another likely contributor to the camellia plantings was renowned horticulturalist Claude Crowe, who was engaged by Bowral Council to advise them on street trees in 1946.

According to Dr Stephen Utick, director of the International Camellia Society, the collection includes some very rare plants including important colonial cultivars.

This includes the Camellia japonica 'Jouvan', a Guilfoyle Nursery 1866 cultivar, described by Dr Utick as 'a rare NSW heritage treasure'.

Other notable plants include an Aspasia Macarthur (Camden Park 1848) and an Oranda-Ko, (Japan, 1739).

The camellias were lit by four beautiful electric street lamps, located in the upper level of the terrace. These attractive street lamps remain in situ on the upper level of the terrace.

The street lamps were installed in 1935 to 'brighten the embankment', which was the first thing visitors saw when they left the station.

In 1939 the council erected the same model of street lights in front of the School of Arts on Bendooley Street at an estimated cost of £43 10s.

While the street lights on Bendooley Street are pink, the ones at the railway station are green.

Both lamps have the same distinctive four-leaf clover emblem; and the same pendant type lamps, sourced from the United States.

The use of trachyte stone, so symbolic of Bowral, and the expert construction of a dry stone terrace was another inspired choice.

Terraces slow water and reduce flooding, while dry stone walls drain naturally. Without this structure it is likely the car parking area would be subject to flooding.

With its trachyte stone, unique street lamps, and the unusual choice of rare ornamental camellias as street trees, the railway terrace is quintessentially Bowral.

It provides a connection between the railway - the gateway to Bowral - and the town's civic centre.

The next time you are racing to catch a train, or waiting to collect a loved one from the station, spare a thought for the unemployed men who built Bowral's Railway Terrace.

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