Sunken

A section of floor in the Big Hill Post Office residence has sunk where wombats burrowed beneath the building. The floor in the photograph drops noticeably across one corner of the room, the timber boards still attached at the edges but bowed in the middle. The boards have buckled along their lengths and split at the joints. Below the floor, the original sub-floor space is partly visible through gaps. The earth underneath has been moved by years of nocturnal digging. The visible result is a smooth dip in what should be a flat floor, more like the inside of a shallow bowl than a damaged plank surface.

Wombats burrow under any structure with enough subfloor clearance and dry ground. Country buildings across south-eastern Australia regularly have to deal with wombats taking up residence under verandahs, shed floors, and unoccupied houses. The Big Hill Post Office has been unoccupied since around 1945, which has given the local wombat population multiple generations of free use of the space underneath. The floor has not been repaired, partly because there is no resident to repair it for, and partly because the wombats are still in residence. They were here before the building was, and they will be here after it isn't.