Postmasters Corner

The timber desk in the postmaster's corner sits exactly where it was left, dust settling across its surface in the years since anyone last used it. Around it, wallpaper pulls away from the walls in long curling sections, each layer giving way to the one that came before it. Light enters and falls across the room with nothing to interrupt it now. Big Hill Post Office opened on 1 November 1869. The NSW Government Gazette of 8 October that year carried the establishment notice signed by Postmaster-General Daniel Egan: "BIG HILL, near Marulan, on the 1st proximo." By 29 November, the mail contract had been awarded to John Wade, who ran the three-stop loop between Mooroowoolen, Long Reach, and Big Hill three times a week by horseback, at £45 per annum, starting 1 January 1870. The building was a combined post office and postmaster's residence, the standard rural arrangement of the period. The actual post-office function occupied a small kiosk window and mail slot at the front of the building. The rest was a family home, with multiple bedrooms each fitted with its own fireplace, a kitchen, a dining area, a side verandah, and a corrugated-iron water tank. Walls were plastered with newspaper to keep out draughts at an elevation of 658 metres, where winters dropped well below freezing. The building's chimneys show sheet-metal work added by a later occupant. By the start of the twentieth century, Big Hill had a Methodist chapel, a school, and this post office. The post office closed in 1945, after 76 years of operation. The chapel still stands as a community building. The post office does not. Brett Patman photographed the building in 2020. The desk remains in the corner. The wallpaper continues to separate from the walls.