Bedroom Chimney

The Big Hill Post Office sits in a small cleared paddock on the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, north of Marulan, at an elevation of 658 metres. It opened on 1 November 1869, gazetted by NSW Postmaster-General Daniel Egan on 7 October of that year, and it closed in 1945 after 76 years of operation. For most of that time it followed the standard rural NSW arrangement: the post-office function occupied a small kiosk at the front of the building, with a single window and a mail slot facing the road, while the rest of the structure was the postmaster's own residence. The residence was a timber building, vertical slab construction with later weatherboard additions, and it ran to several bedrooms, each with its own fireplace. At that elevation, winters on the Southern Tablelands are cold, and the chimneys were a practical necessity rather than a domestic luxury. A previous occupant added sheet-metal work to the chimney stacks, a detail still visible on the exterior. Inside, the walls of at least one bedroom were insulated with newspaper, pressed flat against the timber framing to keep the draughts out. This photograph records one of those bedroom fireplaces as it stood in 2020. The chimney breast dominates the frame. Paint has peeled away from the surface in thick, curling layers, pulling back to the plaster and timber beneath and leaving behind a cross-section of every coat applied across the building's long occupation. The hearth is empty. Dust coats the mantle and the floor around it. Cardboard boxes are stacked against the wall opposite, the room holding its last contents undisturbed. The mail contractor for the first years of the post office's operation was John Wade, awarded a three-year contract on 29 November 1869 to run the route from Mooroowoolen through Long Reach to Big Hill three times a week by horseback, at £45 per annum. The founding postmaster's name has not been recovered from the historical record. The building was photographed by Lost Collective on 13 June 2020.