Brick Gable End

The gabled end wall of the Mill Pond Farm flour mill stands in open paddock country outside Jembaicumbene, New South Wales. Brick rises from a coursed granite base, two sash windows sit below the apex, and a barred timber door occupies the stone foundation. A tall pine stands close to one side. Dry grass presses against the base. The sky is flat and overcast. The mill was built in 1859 by Charles Dransfield, a Yorkshire wool miller turned gold-country wheat farmer who had made enough from wheat and gold leases in the 1850s to commission a serious industrial building on the Southern Tablelands. The bricks were manufactured on the property itself. The granite came from the farm. The massive interior beams were cut from hardwood in the nearby Budawang Ranges. Sydney surveyor C.E. Langley designed the building. P.N. Russell and Co., one of the largest engineering works in colonial Australia, supplied the milling equipment and a 20-horsepower steam engine. The mill opened in January 1860 as the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills. At that point, over 1,000 miners were working Jembaicumbene Creek, approximately 600 of them Chinese. The building ran flour milling, sawmilling, a quartz crushing battery, and a bakery across its four storeys. By 1868 the village around it had grown to include many stores, hotels, and business places. By 1874 it was described as a quiet village. Milling operations ceased in 1885. The steam engine and fittings were dismantled and sold at some point after closure. The building fabric, brick and granite and hardwood beam, remained. Restoration of the mill and homestead began around 2008 and continued for approximately 11 years. The 2022 photograph records the mill's exterior as it stands now: the gable, the stone base, the sash windows, the barred door, and the paddocks that run out to Jembaicumbene Creek beyond the frame.