Delegate Shearers Quarters

The Delegate Shearers Quarters stands in the southern reaches of the Snowy Monaro, close to Delegate, one of the earliest sites of European settlement on the Monaro tableland. Robert Campbell of Duntroon occupied Delegate Station from 1827, with Donald Ross as his first overseer, making this corner of the Monaro among the first pastoral frontiers beyond the settled districts of New South Wales. Shearers' quarters were a standard feature of the larger Monaro pastoral runs. The research record notes that these communal structures typically comprised huts with approximately ten bunks, housing shearers alongside the broader station workforce. They were working buildings, built for utility and capacity, not comfort. This photograph records what that utility looks like after decades of disuse. A long dormitory stretches the length of the frame, its worn timber floorboards thick with dust. Paint has retreated from the walls in sheets, exposing the material beneath. No furniture, no fittings, no trace of the men who cycled through on the seasonal shearing run. The room holds its proportions and not much else. The southern Monaro that surrounds this building has been shaped by successive waves of disruption. The 1890s drought and rabbit plague halved sheep numbers across New South Wales. The 1991 collapse of the Wool Reserve Price Scheme, when prices crashed to approximately $3 per kilogram, delivered the final economic blow to many marginal properties. The shearing labour that once filled quarters like these thinned out across those decades, and buildings built for thirty men found themselves holding none. Brett Patman photographed the Delegate Shearers Quarters in 2018 as part of the A Place to Call Home series, documenting 59 structures across the Snowy Monaro and Hunter Valley regions before they are lost entirely.