Fireplace and Chimney

The rendered fireplace at the centre of this frame is one of seven recorded in the Mill Pond Farm homestead at Jembaicumbene, New South Wales. The room around it has deteriorated significantly: whitewashed fibre cement walls, a timber plank floor scattered with debris, roof framing partly open to the sky, and light entering through small sash windows and an open door. The fireplace itself remains largely intact, its brick chimney rising through the disordered ceiling above. The homestead was established in the 1830s as part of the pastoral estate of William Henry Roberts and his brother-in-law Andrew Badgery, who are recorded as entering their partnership following Roberts's acquisition of land in 1835. The property sits on Walbanga country, on what is now Majors Creek Road, approximately 10 kilometres south-west of Braidwood on the Southern Tablelands. The estate changed considerably across the nineteenth century. Wheat cropping began in the 1840s. In 1851, a second gold discovery in the Braidwood district occurred on the property itself. By 1859, Charles Edward Dransfield had constructed a four-storey steam flour mill on the site using bricks manufactured locally and granite sourced from the farm, with hardwood beams cut from the nearby Budawang Ranges. The mill served a settlement of over 1,000 miners working Jembaicumbene Creek. Milling operations ceased in 1885. The homestead survived all of it. Its Gothic Revival bargeboards and seven open fireplaces remained through the mill's working life, its closure, and the long decades that followed. Beginning around 2008, Antony Davies and Andrew Gow undertook an 11-year restoration of the mill and farmhouse. The property was listed for sale in 2019. This photograph, made in 2022, records the fireplace as it now stands: the most durable thing left in a room that time has otherwise taken apart.