Wagon

The wagon sits near the centre of the building, its spoke wheels locked in place by rust, the iron rims pitted and flaking. The tray boards have split along the grain over years of contraction and expansion inside the shed. Around it, the walls are rough-sawn slab timber, the split faces still carrying the marks of the tools that shaped them. Leichhardt House is a slab hut cottage in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, built around 1890 during the later period of free-selection settlement in the region. The Crown Lands Acts of 1861 and 1884 opened large pastoral runs to smaller selectors, and the slab hut was their standard form of construction: locally available eucalypt timber split into flitches, fitted vertically or horizontally between grooved posts, built quickly but with materials dense enough to last well beyond what their builders anticipated. The building was originally a domestic dwelling. A family photograph taken around 1920 shows two boys at the cottage entrance; that image survives in the family's possession. A larger home was built nearby in the early 1900s. That house was destroyed in the fires that swept the Southern Tablelands in the 1964-65 season. The slab cottage survived. At some point after the fires, the end wall containing the original chimney was removed and replaced with large doors, converting the cottage to shed use. Agricultural equipment moved in. The wagon is part of what remained. A washstand with ornate brass drop handles still stands inside. Counter scales sit dust-covered on a surface. Animal traps, a horseshoe, and a wireless set occupy other corners of the room. The photograph was made in 2020. The property remains in active use, held by the same family across multiple generations. The location is kept anonymous at the owner's request.