Traps

Two rusted steel jaw-traps lie on the floor of Leichhardt House, surrounded by debris and the remnants of decayed timber. The metal is heavy with oxidation. Whatever wood once formed part of their mechanisms has broken down into the general debris of the floor. They sit where they were left, in no particular order, as though someone put them down mid-task and the task was never resumed. Leichhardt House is a slab timber cottage built around 1890 in the NSW Southern Tablelands, constructed using locally available hardwood in the colonial vernacular tradition common to selectors across the region following the Robertson Land Acts of 1861 and the Crown Lands Act of 1884. Slab hut construction of this era typically used split eucalypt timber, fitted vertically or horizontally between grooved posts, producing walls of considerable density and durability. The building's single-storey rectangular form is consistent with that typology. The cottage has been in continuous use on a working pastoral property across more than 130 years. A c.1920 photograph held by the family shows two young boys at the cottage entrance, placing the building's documented history across at least four generations. A larger family home built nearby in the early 1900s did not survive the 1964-65 fire season, which burned across the Southern Tablelands and destroyed an estimated 530,000 hectares across NSW. The slab hut endured. After 1965, the end wall containing the original chimney was removed and replaced with large doors, converting the cottage to shed use. The jaw-traps are among the objects remaining inside. Steel traps of this kind were a standard pest-control tool on pastoral properties throughout rural NSW, used to manage rabbit and fox populations. The 2020 photograph records them as they are now: dormant, rusted, held in place only by their own weight on a dusty floor.