Strawn Floor Room

A long timber table with turned legs sits at the centre of the room, its surface bare, the floor around it scattered with straw and broken boards. Multi-pane windows along the left wall let in a flat, even light. A plank door stands at the far end of the space with a wall shelf beside it, and the roof framing above is fully exposed, the building open to itself. The mill at Jembaicumbene was built in 1859 by Charles Dransfield, a Yorkshire wool miller turned gold-country wheat farmer who had made his fortune in the Braidwood district during the previous decade. The construction used brick manufactured on the property and granite quarried from the farm's own land, with massive hardwood beams cut from the nearby Budawang Ranges. The building was designed by Sydney surveyor C.E. Langley, and the engineering works including the steam engine were supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney, then one of the largest engineering firms in colonial Australia. The mill opened in January 1860 under the name the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills. At the time, more than 1,000 miners were working Jembaicumbene Creek below the property, including approximately 600 Chinese miners. The four-storey structure housed flour milling, a sawmill, a quartz crushing battery for gold extraction, and a bakery. By 1885, all milling operations had ceased, and the steam engine and fittings were removed at some point after closure. What remains is the building itself: its thick walls, its heavy beams, its windows still in place. The room photographed here in 2022 holds almost nothing. A table, some straw, daylight through the glass. The Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills is described as the most substantial building surviving from the gold rush era in the district. This frame records what that survival looks like from the inside.