Ladder to Apex

The upper reaches of the four-storey mill at Mill Pond Farm are a study in what builders could do with local materials and time. The gable wall is whitewashed brick, made on the property itself; the stone in the lower courses came from the farm's granite country. A timber ladder climbs from the worn wooden floor to the very peak of the roof, and on either side of the gable, two red-framed sash windows open to the fields beyond. The frames are the only colour in the space. The mill was built in 1859 by Charles Dransfield, a Yorkshire-born wool miller who had come to the Braidwood district during the gold rush and made his fortune growing wheat and acquiring gold leases. Sydney surveyor C.E. Langley designed the building. Engineering works, including the 20-horsepower steam engine and associated fittings, were supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney, at the time one of the largest industrial engineering operations in colonial Australia. The building opened as the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills in January 1860. The timing placed it at the centre of a busy goldfield economy. More than 1,000 miners were working Jembaicumbene Creek when the mill opened, including approximately 600 Chinese miners. The mill housed flour milling, a sawmill, a quartz crushing battery for gold extraction, and a bakery, all under one roof. Milling operations ceased in 1885, and the steam engine and fittings were dismantled and sold at some point after closure. The building survived. From around 2008, the property was restored over roughly 11 years by Antony Davies and Andrew Gow. The sash windows throughout the mill were custom-made by Amish craftsmen in Pennsylvania as part of that restoration. The lower mill floors became the Wheatfield Gallery, showing fine art, craft, and decorative arts. The upper floors, where the ladder still leans against its gable wall, were photographed in 2022.