Verandah

The verandah of the Big Hill Post Office runs along the bedroom wing of the old postmaster's residence, a combined dwelling and mail point that opened on 1 November 1869 and served the grazing district north of Marulan for 76 years. By the time Brett Patman photographed it in 2020, one corner had broken away and the structure listed against the paddock behind it, paint lifting from the timber in long curls that expose the layers beneath. The building is timber throughout: vertical slab construction in the original sections, with later additions clad in weatherboard. Inside, the bedroom walls were plastered with newspaper as insulation against the sub-freezing winters at 658 metres elevation. Each bedroom had its own fireplace. The post-office function itself occupied a small kiosk window at the front of the building, with a mail slot facing the road. The rest was a family's house. The post office opened during a period of active rural expansion across New South Wales. The NSW Government Gazette carried the establishment notice on 8 October 1869, with the formal opening set for 1 November. By January 1870, mail contractor John Wade was running the route from Mooroowoolen through Long Reach to Big Hill three times a week by horseback, on a three-year contract worth £45 per annum. The settlement around the post office had been fifty years in the making by then, downstream of Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur's Arthursleigh pastoral grant of 1819 on the Wollondilly River. The post office closed in 1945. The verandah was still standing when Patman visited in June 2020, though not by much. Sunlight crosses the boards in the photograph, picking out every split and gap. The structure holds its shape, just.