Soft washing in Wyee, the old railway and colliery town

What should owners of older Wyee homes know before a wash?

The town was first known as Norahville, after its nearest coastal village, and became Wyee in 1887 when the Main Northern railway line broke through. The name is said to come from an Awabakal term for fire or a place of bushfires. Wyee Colliery worked here under State ownership from 1962 to 2002 and reopened in the mid-2000s as Mannering Colliery.

Parts of Wyee, West Wyee in particular, were first subdivided as farmland, and the town only got a sewer in 2021, when 400 properties were connected. In the same year separate houses made up 77.8% of the occupied homes, and semis or townhouses 10.8%.

If a house here was built or reclad in the decades SafeWork NSW identifies for widespread asbestos cement sheet, the 1940s to the late 1980s, its walls must never meet high pressure water. A soft wash for Wyee walls cleans with a solution applied gently, never a high pressure jet.

Key figures

1892

Wyee railway station opened

400

properties joined to the new sewer in 2021

77.8%

of occupied homes were separate houses

Sources

• Wikipedia, Wyee, New South Wales
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats, Wyee
• SafeWork NSW, Asbestos
• NSW Spatial Services, Administrative Boundaries (postcode, council, distance, neighbours)