GMC Grille Badge

The chrome GMC nameplate at the centre of this grille is one of the more quietly stubborn things in the frame. Around it, the horizontal bars have lost most of their paint. Rust has moved in where the finish gave way. The red and blue panels above are faded but intact. The truck sits outside at Jembaicumbene, on the grounds of Mill Pond Farm. Mill Pond Farm sits at Jembaicumbene in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, roughly 10 kilometres south-west of Braidwood. The property's origins are in the 1830s, when William Henry Roberts and his brother-in-law Andrew Badgery established a pastoral estate on the land. Wheat cropping began in the 1840s. In 1859, Charles Dransfield constructed a four-storey flour mill on the site using bricks manufactured on the property and granite sourced from the farm itself, with large hardwood beams cut from the nearby Budawang Ranges. The mill opened in January 1860 as the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills, its steam engine and milling equipment supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney. At the time, more than 1,000 miners were working Jembaicumbene Creek. Milling operations ran until 1885. The property passed through various uses across the following century. In around 2008, antiques dealers Antony Davies and Andrew Gow began an 11-year restoration of the mill and homestead. The lower floors of the mill became the Wheatfield Gallery. The property was listed for sale in 2019. This photograph, made in 2022, records the GMC truck as it sits on the grounds: grille intact, nameplate legible, bodywork carrying the slow evidence of years parked in open country. The vehicle is not the primary story of Mill Pond Farm, but it is part of what the property looks like now, and that is enough reason to record it.