Chaff Cutter Machine

A red-painted chaff cutter stands on splayed timber legs on worn floorboard floors inside one of the outbuildings at Mill Pond Farm, Jembaicumbene, NSW. Toothed feed rollers and a large cast flywheel remain in place, still red against whitewashed brick walls. Two small windows in the wall look out to green paddocks beyond. Exposed roof beams run overhead. The machine sits as it was left, a piece of working farm equipment that outlasted the operations it served. Mill Pond Farm incorporates the site of the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills, a four-storey structure built in 1859 by Charles Dransfield using bricks manufactured on the property and granite sourced from the farm itself. The massive interior beams were cut from the Budawang Ranges. The engineering works, including the 20-horsepower steam engine and milling machinery, were supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney, one of the largest engineering firms in colonial Australia. The mill was designed by Sydney surveyor C.E. Langley and opened in January 1860 to serve a settlement of over 1,000 gold miners working Jembaicumbene Creek, approximately 600 of them Chinese. Milling operations at the site ceased in 1885. The steam engine and fittings were later dismantled and sold. The mill building survived and, from around 2008, was subject to an 11-year restoration by Antony Davies and Andrew Gow. The lower mill floors became the Wheatfield Gallery. The outbuildings, including the 1840s timber wagon barn and stables, were also restored during that period. The chaff cutter photographed in 2022 records what remains inside those farm structures: functional equipment left in place, worn boards, whitewashed walls, and two windows framing the paddocks that the farm has worked since the 1830s.