GMC Front Wheel

Inside the 1840s timber wagon barn at Mill Pond Farm, a General Motors truck has come to rest on the dirt floor, its faded blue paint lifting from the cab and front guard in long curling flakes. The bonnet badge still reads 'General Motors Truck'. Below the front guard, a pink and yellow steel wheel catches the light that filters through the board walls. Behind the vehicle, stacked rims lean against the wall beside a red trolley jack and a white bucket. The barn roof is corrugated metal. The floor is bare earth. The wagon barn dates to the 1840s, constructed as part of the Roberts and Badgery pastoral estate on Walbanga (Yuin) country, roughly 10 kilometres south-west of Braidwood on the Southern Tablelands. The estate was established in the 1830s when William Henry Roberts and his brother-in-law Andrew Badgery took up land in the Jembaicumbene valley. Wheat cropping began on the property in the same decade, and the barn would have housed working vehicles and equipment through successive eras of farm life. In 1859, Charles Dransfield constructed a four-storey flour mill on the property using locally manufactured brick and farm-sourced granite, with massive hardwood beams cut from the nearby Budawang Ranges. The mill opened in January 1860 as the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills, serving a creek-side settlement of more than 1,000 gold miners. Milling operations ceased in 1885. The steam engine and fittings were dismantled and sold at some point after closure. From around 2008, antiques dealers Antony Davies and Andrew Gow undertook an 11-year restoration of the mill and homestead. Davies had a documented passion for vintage vehicles and horse-drawn carriages. The truck inside the barn is one trace of that interest, left in place on the dirt floor as the property passed through restoration and into a new life as a gallery and private residence. This photograph was made in 2022.