Boco Homestead

Boco Homestead sits on a slight rise in flat country in the Snowy Monaro region, a single-storey timber and corrugated-iron home with a wraparound verandah. The front verandah is supported on slim timber posts, the roofline shallowly pitched. Behind the house, a row of fruit trees has gone wild. A timber outbuilding sits at one corner of the yard. The fence at the front of the property has fallen down in sections. The garden plantings, including old roses, a kurrajong, and a hedge of tea-tree, have continued to grow without maintenance. The verandah floorboards are still sound.

Homesteads like Boco were the working centres of grazing properties across the Monaro from the late nineteenth century through to the mid-twentieth. The family who built it lived here, ran the stock from here, and raised children here. As properties consolidated and graziers moved into nearby townships, homesteads like this were progressively abandoned. The land remained productive; the houses did not. Boco is still part of an active working property, but the homestead itself has not been lived in for decades. It is left in place because the cost of demolition is more than the property earns from the area the house sits on.