Water Tank

The corrugated galvanised iron water tank at the Big Hill Post Office is a straightforward object: a cylinder of ribbed metal, a downpipe from the roofline, a wall of weatherboard behind it. Paint has lifted and peeled from the boards in long, curling strips. Bare winter trees rise behind the outbuilding, their branches bare against the sky. It is not a dramatic corner of the property. It is the kind of detail that kept the building habitable. Big Hill Post Office opened on 1 November 1869, following a gazettal notice signed by NSW Postmaster-General Daniel Egan on 7 October that year. The post office function itself was compact, a kiosk window and a mail slot on the front of the building, the rest of the structure serving as the postmaster's residence. This was the standard rural arrangement of the period: the family lived in the building that also happened to be the district's mail point. The settlement at Big Hill had been fifty years in the making before the post office opened. Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur received his Arthursleigh grant in September 1819, and by 1820 the property was stocked and running. By the time John Wade began riding the mail run to Big Hill from 1 January 1870, under a three-year contract worth £45 per annum, the district had a Methodist chapel, a school, and now a post office. The building sits at 658 metres elevation on the Southern Tablelands, north of Marulan. Winters at that height are serious. The post office closed in 1945 after 76 years of operation. The building has been abandoned since. When Brett Patman photographed it in 2020, the weatherboards were peeling, the verandah was collapsing at one corner, and dense blackberry had consumed the back garden. The water tank was still standing, still connected to the roofline above it, still doing what it was made to do, or at least still shaped like something that once did.