Long Corrugated Shed

The long shed sits low to the ground behind a fringe of tall summer grass and yellow wildflowers, its corrugated iron walls weathered to the colour of old pewter. A row of timber-framed windows runs the length of the building's face, each one looking out at an overcast sky. A single power line cuts diagonally across the frame. It is a working outbuilding, plain and practical, the kind of structure that gets built without ceremony and kept standing for as long as it earns its place. Mill Pond Farm at Jembaicumbene, New South Wales, is a property with origins in the 1830s, when William Henry Roberts and his brother-in-law Andrew Badgery established a pastoral estate on the land. Wheat cropping and dairy farming followed in the 1840s. By 1859, Charles Dransfield had built 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 engineering works and 20-horsepower steam engine were supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney, one of the largest engineering firms in colonial Australia at the time. The mill opened in January 1860 as the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills and operated until 1885, when milling operations ceased entirely. The property sits 10 kilometres south-west of Braidwood on Majors Creek Road, in Walbanga (Yuin) country. Adjacent Exeter Farm, on Majors Creek Road, was where Archer, winner of the first two Melbourne Cups in 1861 and 1862, was foaled, retired, and eventually buried. The Roberts and Badgery family that established Mill Pond Farm also had strong ties to that horse stud. From around 2008, the property underwent an 11-year restoration by Antony Davies and Andrew Gow. In 2022, the corrugated iron shed, the grass, the wildflowers, and a single power line were what remained in the frame.