Rust

The metal surface in this photograph has been surrendering to rust for a long time. Ochre and deep red-brown blooms spread across the steel in uneven formations, the corrosion working outward from pits and seams in slow, dense patterns. It is the kind of oxidisation that takes decades to accumulate, layer by layer, in a building that stopped being maintained and started being used for something else entirely. Leichhardt House is a slab cottage in the NSW Southern Tablelands, built around 130 years ago by a family whose name and exact location remain private at their own request. The construction follows the colonial vernacular typology common across rural New South Wales from the late nineteenth century: rough-sawn eucalypt timber, split into slabs and fitted between grooved posts, raised by settlers who could erect a basic structure in a matter of weeks using timber available on the selection itself. The building began as a dwelling. By the time Brett Patman photographed it in 2020, the end wall that once held a chimney had been removed and replaced with large doors, the kind of modification that signals a shift from domestic life to working storage. Inside, the original fittings remain: a hardwood washstand with ornate brass handles, counter scales still sitting where they were left, a hanging scale with a frozen dial, animal traps, a wireless set. And metal surfaces, unprotected now for long enough that the rust has had its way with them entirely. The building outlasted a larger, newer family home on the same property, which was destroyed in the fires that swept the Southern Tablelands in the 1964-65 season. The slab walls held. Dense hardwood construction, close to the ground, proved more resilient than the later building beside it. The rust in this photograph is part of the same story: a structure that endures, changes use, and slowly shows the cost of that endurance in its surfaces.