History

Inside Leichhardt House, a wall tells the whole story without any single word. Layer upon layer of wallpaper and paint, each pattern distinct, each one pasted over what came before, now pulling away from the surface in curling sheets. Sunlight finds the wall and makes the depth of it visible: this is not a single act of decoration but a sequence of them, stretched across generations of occupation. The building is a slab hut cottage in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, constructed around 1890. Owner estimates place it at approximately 130 years old at the time of photography in 2020. The construction follows the colonial vernacular typology common across rural New South Wales from around 1790 to 1920: rough-sawn hardwood slabs, locally sourced, fitted by hand, built quickly by selectors who needed shelter before they needed anything else. The form is simple and rectangular. The materials are what the land provided. At some point in the mid-twentieth century, the end wall containing the original chimney was removed and replaced with large doors, converting the building from a dwelling to an agricultural shed. The domestic fittings remained. A hardwood washstand with ornate brass drop handles still stands inside. Counter scales and a hanging scale, both dust-covered, sit where they were left. The wireless set near the wall suggests occupation continued well into the mid-twentieth century. The 1964-65 fire season burned through the Southern Tablelands with severe force. The Chatsbury-Bungonia fire alone burned 250,000 hectares between Goulburn and the South Coast. A larger family home on the same property, built in the early 1900s, was destroyed. The slab hut survived. The 2020 Lost Collective series documents what remains. The wall photographed here is one of its quieter records: not machinery or fittings, but the simple fact that people lived here, repainted, re-papered, and went on living, for longer than most buildings manage.