End of the Mill

The Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills stood at the centre of a working valley economy for 25 years. Charles Dransfield began construction in 1859, using bricks manufactured on the property itself and granite quarried from the farm. The massive interior beams were cut from timber in the nearby Budawang Ranges. The mill opened in January 1860, its engineering works and 20-horsepower steam engine supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney, one of the largest industrial firms in colonial Australia. The building was designed by Sydney surveyor C.E. Langley. The structure served a settlement of more than 1,000 miners working Jembaicumbene Creek, including approximately 600 Chinese miners, at the peak of the district's gold rush. Under one four-storey roof, the mill housed flour milling, a sawmill, a quartz crushing battery, and a bakery. All milling operations ceased in 1885. The steam engine and fittings were dismantled and sold at some point after closure. What remained was the building's fabric: brick, granite, and hardwood, left to the slow work of weather and time. This 2022 photograph records the condition of that fabric at the end. Weathered timber and corroded iron sit in partial surrender, surfaces roughened by exposure, the material grain of the original construction still legible beneath the deterioration. The mill is described as the most substantial structure to survive from the gold rush era in the Jembaicumbene district. Its walls remain standing, the evidence of what Dransfield built still present, even as the details of the working interior have long since given way. Mill Pond Farm sits on Walbanga (Yuin) country, 10 kilometres south-west of Braidwood on the Southern Tablelands.