Timber Stable

The timber stable at Mill Pond Farm is one of several outbuildings dating to the 1840s, when the property was being run as a working pastoral and wheat-farming operation on the granite country of the Southern Tablelands. Open bays face a grassed paddock enclosed by a post and rail fence. A gabled section with a high loft door rises above the main stable run. A riveted metal grain silo stands immediately alongside, its surface carrying the same rust as the corrugated iron roof above the stable bays. Weathered boards and the accumulated marks of outdoor use over many decades show throughout. The property was established in the 1830s by William Henry Roberts, who acquired the land in 1835 and entered a pastoral partnership with his brother-in-law Andrew Badgery. Wheat cropping began in the 1840s and continued through to 1885, and it was during that period that the timber stable, wagon barn, and associated farm structures were built. The broader estate was significant in the early pastoral development of the Southern Tablelands, and both Roberts and Badgery were known as racehorse breeders. The adjacent Exeter Farm at 662 Majors Creek Road was where Archer, winner of the first two Melbourne Cups in 1861 and 1862, was foaled. In 1859, Charles Dransfield constructed a four-storey flour mill on the property using locally manufactured brick and farm-sourced granite, with hardwood beams cut from the nearby Budawang Ranges. The mill opened in January 1860 as the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills, with its steam engine supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney. Milling operations ceased in 1885. The stable and silo photographed in 2022 remain standing alongside the mill and homestead, unchanged in their essentials from when the property was running wheat, wool, and horses across these paddocks.