Weatherboard Homestead

The buildings in this frame sit on land that has been worked since the 1830s. A small gabled cottage with a corrugated iron roof stands at the centre of a wide, mown paddock. Behind it, a larger barn with a faded red iron roof occupies the middle distance. A timber power pole rises between the two structures. Tall trees press in from behind, and the sky above carries the flat weight of an overcast Southern Tablelands day. The whole scene has the stillness of somewhere that has seen most of its traffic come and go. The estate was established in the 1830s by William Henry Roberts, who was granted or purchased the Jembaicumbene land in 1835 and ran the property in partnership with his brother-in-law Andrew Badgery. Wheat cropping began in the 1840s, along with the construction of a timber wagon barn and stables. The property produced fine merino wool in the late nineteenth century and ran dairy cattle across its paddocks. By 1859, more than 1,000 miners were working Jembaicumbene Creek, including approximately 600 Chinese miners drawn by the second gold discovery in the Braidwood district, which had occurred on this very property in 1851. Charles Dransfield, a Yorkshire wool miller turned gold-rush entrepreneur, built the four-storey steam flour mill on the estate in 1859. The mill opened in January 1860, its steam engine and fittings supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney, and it served the goldfield community until milling operations ceased in 1885. What this photograph records is the older, quieter part of the property: the homestead buildings that pre-date the mill, that survived it, and that stood on this paddock long after the last wheat crop came off. The 1830s farmhouse carries Gothic Revival bargeboards. The 1840s wagon barn still stands. The grass around them is kept short. The power pole is the only concession to a more recent century. Photographed in 2022, part of the Mill Pond Farm series.