Dalgety Stone Shearers Quarters

The stone shearers' quarters at Dalgety, on the Snowy River in southern NSW, is a single-storey rectangular building of dressed local stone, built directly into the slope of the paddock. The walls are dry-stone in the lower courses, transitioning to mortared stonework at door and window heights. The roof is corrugated iron, replaced more recently than the walls. A timber verandah runs along the front, supported on rough-cut posts. The door is timber, latched with a wooden peg. The whole building is a working response to local materials and local weather. Nothing about it is decorative; everything is structural.

Dalgety was a planned colonial settlement on the Snowy River, briefly considered as a federal capital site before the choice fell on Canberra. The shearers' quarters were built later, in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, to house contract shearers who travelled the country on a seasonal circuit. Stone was used because it was free and locally available, and because the Monaro winters demanded thicker walls than weatherboard could provide. The quarters in this photograph are no longer in use: contract shearing has largely moved to caravan-based teams who bring their own accommodation. The building has been preserved as a heritage feature on the working property.