Comfort Manor

Location

Penrose is a small township in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia
Located between Bundanoon and Marulan on the Highland Way, Penrose is 152 km south-west of Sydney, 650 m above sea-level and, a population of just over 250. Like Wingello and Exeter, Penrose is a town which came into existence in the late 1860s when the railway between Sydney and Goulburn was being constructed. It thrived until the 1920s and then slowly declined when the trains started to by-pass the station.

The first European to pass through the area was surveyor-general James Meehan who travelled through the district on 17 March 1818 and named the local creek St Patrick¹s River (known locally as Paddy¹s River).

The railway with its two stations – Kareela and Cables’ Siding (where the railway crossings at the northern and southern ends of town are now located) – arrived in 1868. People began to settle beside the track in 1870. One of the first properties was that of Philip Rush who occupied the land now known as ‘Sylvan Glen’ in 1870.

By the 1890s the town had grown large enough to have its own Methodist Church (previously used in Bowral and re-erected at Penrose in 1893), 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.