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01 Mill Pond FarmJembaicumbene2022
ISO 1001/3 secf/8.0125mm
Series · 50 prints
Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap
Mill Pond Farm is a farm at Jembaicumbene, 10 km south-west of Braidwood in New South Wales, and the site of the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills, a four-storey mill that Charles Edward Dransfield built in 1859 from bricks made on the property and granite cut on the farm. The mill was in full operation by March 1860, and by 1889 it was already known as Dransfield's old mill. The former mill, with its stables and shearing shed, is a local heritage item, and Mill Pond Farm is a private residence.
Charles Edward Dransfield, who had grown wheat and sold gold leases in the 1850s, built the mill in 1859 on what is now Mill Pond Farm, with hardwood beams from the Budawang Ranges inside. On 21 January 1860 the Braidwood Observer reported that the Jembaicumbene Flour Mills would open at the close of the month, and Dransfield's notice named them The Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills. By 19 March 1860 the Sydney Morning Herald's Braidwood correspondent found the new mill 'in full operation'.
By June 1870 Dransfield had set up a ten-stamper crushing machine on the flat beside the mill for the quartz of the Braidwood reefs. Dransfield died at Summer Hill on 19 January 1888, and by March 1889 the building was Dransfield's old mill, with an alluvial gold claim of about 40 men worked below it.
By 1905 the property was called Caloola, and by 1908 the old mill was a shearing shed. The mill has been a local heritage item since 1991, and Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Local Environmental Plan 2022 lists the former steam flour mill, including stables and shearing shed. Restoration of the mill, farmhouse and outbuildings began in 2008; by October 2016 the mill's lower floor had opened as the Wheatfield Gallery, and Mill Pond Farm was offered for sale in October 2019. The property is a private residence, with the four-storey mill, the Gothic Revival bargeboards of the farmhouse and an 1840s timber wagon barn on 41 hectares of granite country beside Jembaicumbene Creek.
Region Canberra (26 October 2019), Braidwood Observer (21 January 1860), Sydney Morning Herald (22 March 1860) and Braidwood Times (11 October 2016)
Hand-signed and numbered, printed from the original RAW file. Open editions in the two smallest sizes; limited editions of 100, 50 and 25 in the three larger, never reissued once they sell through.
Made to order by Brett in Sydney, from the original RAW file. Each print is hand-signed and numbered before it ships.
Paper
Ilford Galerie cotton rag, 310 gsm. Acrylic on metallic gloss, 260 gsm.
Lead time
Unframed: 5 to 10 business days. Framed and acrylic: 10 to 20.
The Sydney Mail reported in June 1870 that Dransfield, 'in order to test the reefs in the Braidwood district', had bought a ten-stamper crushing machine in Sydney and set it up on the flat beside the flour mill. He then offered the reefing parties, who had no machine of their own, crushing at 25 per cent less than they had been charged, and he and others were about to put up a quartz mill on Major's Creek.
When the Australian Town and Country Journal's writer came over the Jembaicumbene Bridge in May 1905, gold dredges were at work on the creeks and Caloola stood beyond them. Its homestead, he was told, had been built by the owner 'upon the site of an old mud dairy', which the paper called 'the first dairy of any kind in the district'.
The Braidwood Times reported in 2016 that after the mill closed its steam engine and fittings were dismantled and sold, and that the building changed hands several times within the extended family over the following century and stood exposed to the elements. In the restoration, the mill's timber sash windows were made by Amish craftsmen in Pennsylvania to match the only one left intact.