Three Storey Facade

The four-storey mill at Jembaicumbene was built in 1859 by Charles Dransfield, a Yorkshire wool miller turned wheat farmer and gold prospector who had made his fortune on the New South Wales Southern Tablelands. The walls are locally manufactured brick from the property itself, sitting on a base of farm-sourced granite. The massive interior beams were cut from the Budawang Ranges. The building was designed by Sydney surveyor C.E. Langley, and the engineering works, including a 20-horsepower steam engine, were supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney, then one of the largest engineering operations in colonial Australia. The mill opened in January 1860 as the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills. At that moment, more than 1,000 miners were working Jembaicumbene Creek below the property, approximately 600 of them Chinese. The building served them and the district's wheat growers for 25 years. When milling ceased in 1885, the steam engine and fittings were eventually dismantled and sold. What remained was the shell: four storeys of brick and granite, its central timber loading doors stacked one above the other, a small iron balcony at first-floor level, and two metal star anchor plates bracing the upper brickwork against the slow pull of the structure's own weight. The 2022 photograph records the mill's western facade from the paddock. Long grass runs to the base of the dressed stone plinth. The hipped tiled roof sits above the full height of the brickwork, its ridge unbroken. The star plates are visible on the upper courses, practical ironwork doing the same job it was installed to do more than 160 years ago. The mill is described as the most substantial building surviving from the gold rush era in the Jembaicumbene district. Part of the Mill Pond Farm series.