Timber Shed Interior

Inside the timber shed, two heavy tree-trunk posts rise from a floor thick with loose straw, carrying a rough beam-and-rafter roof of unfinished timber. Weathered board partitions divide the interior into sections, and a wooden trough remains along one wall. Corrugated iron sheeting closes the upper structure. Light enters dimly, throwing the grain of the old timber into relief. The shed is one of the outbuildings at Mill Pond Farm, a 41-hectare property on Majors Creek Road at Jembaicumbene, roughly 10 kilometres south-west of Braidwood on the Southern Tablelands. The property's pastoral foundations were established in the 1830s when William Henry Roberts and his brother-in-law Andrew Badgery developed the land as part of their estate. Timber outbuildings including a wagon barn and stables were constructed in the 1840s, and wheat cropping began on the property during the same period. In 1859, Charles Dransfield constructed a four-storey flour mill on the site using bricks manufactured on the property and stone from farm-sourced granite, with massive hardwood beams cut from the nearby Budawang Ranges. The mill opened in January 1860 as the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills, with engineering works and a 20-horsepower steam engine supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney. Milling operations continued until 1885, after which the steam engine and fittings were removed. The property went through a substantial restoration beginning around 2008, when Antony Davies and Andrew Gow worked over approximately 11 years to stabilise the mill and homestead. The lower floors of the mill became the Wheatfield Gallery. The 1840s outbuildings, with their post-and-beam construction and unlined walls, remained largely as they had been. This photograph, made in 2022, records what the shed holds now: straw, old timber, and the trough that nobody moved.