Side Bedroom at Woolla, two single beds fill the room, pushed against opposite walls with a timber dresser wedged.

Series · 9 prints

Woolla

Photographed 2021
Frames 9
Camera NIKON D850
Location New South Wales, Australia
Status Kept, not restored; ongoing maintenance
Years 1927 to 1990
Specs Two hand-split slab huts under one large tree · Davis family continuous ownership 1910 to 2004 · Survived 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires
01 ABOUT THIS SERIES

Series story

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

Woolla is a property on the Deua River near Braidwood in southern New South Wales. The slab huts under a single large tree were built and inhabited by the Davis family across four generations from 1910 to 1990. The family held freehold title to the property continuously through 2004.

The original freehold was taken up in 1910 by Helena "Nellie" Davis. Her son Everid, her daughter Neta, and her younger children Vern (born 1928) and Myrtle (born 1930) lived between the two huts: kitchen in the first, three sleeping rooms in the second. Nellie died in 1977. Neta died at Woolla in 1990. Vern moved into the Braidwood nursing home that year with Parkinson's and died at Braidwood Hospital in 2004. The current owners keep Woolla intact rather than restoring it. The walls of the huts are papered over hand-split slabs, newsprint behind the wallpaper, and Vern's calendars from local businesses still hang on the wall: Goulburn 1972, Braidwood 1983, Batemans Bay 1990.

Lost Collective Journal (Why the calendars stay where they are)

02 TIMELINE

Chronology

1910
1928
1952
1977
1990
2004
2008
2020
03 PRINTS

Prints in this series

Side Bedroom at Woolla, two single beds fill the room, pushed against opposite walls with a timber dresser wedged.
Side Bedroom
Side Bedroom Window at Woolla, a single iron-frame bed sits against the far wall, its faded orange mattress still bearing.
Side Bedroom Window
Rear Room at Woolla, a narrow room built from rough-sawn timber and lined with deteriorating plaster.
Rear Room
Rear Bedroom at Woolla, a single bed sits against the back wall, its striped mattress sagging under a collapsed sheet.
Rear Bedroom
Main Bedroom at Woolla, a timber-framed single bed sits against patterned wallpaper, its woven bedspread still spread flat.
Main Bedroom
Main Bedroom Cross View at Woolla, a single bed sits against the far wall, its striped coverlet still stretched flat.
Main Bedroom Cross View
Kitchen at Woolla, a low ceiling of corrugated iron and rough-hewn beams presses down over wide timber floorboards.
Kitchen
Back Room Entry at Woolla, corrugated iron roofing sits low over rough-hewn timber walls lined with hessian.
Back Room Entry
Back Door at Woolla, inside a slab timber cabin at Woolla, a four-panel door hangs open on rusted hinges.
Back Door
04 ABOUT THE PRINTS

How they’re made

Paper

Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm. Metallic Gloss 260 gsm for acrylic-mounted prints.

Sizes

Five sizes, XS to XL, from $100. Open editions in XS and S, limited editions in M, L and XL.

Print tiers →

Production

Made to order in 5 to 10 business days.

05 FIELD NOTE

From the field

Read all field notes