The old railway station at Tenterfield, on the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales, near the Queensland border, is quite beautiful. The cedar furnishing shines, the brass plates are polished and the ferns and flowers flourish in the summer warmth.
Real trains don t live here any more.
Yet it is clear that someone important once trod the platform, or that something of great moment happened here. Only this could explain the devotion with which Pepper and the society care for the old place. Fame did touch the station. The speech, about the desirability of the six colonies joining in federation, was to take on the grand title of the Tenterfield Oration. Parkes became known as the Father of Federation.