Windscreen and Bonnet

Viewed from inside an old vehicle, a split rear window divides the frame. The glass is scratched and hazy, catching light from a building somewhere beyond the cab. Below it, the curved rear deck retains patches of its original reddish paint, worn through in places to bare and rusted metal. The vehicle sits somewhere on the grounds of Mill Pond Farm at Jembaicumbene, near Braidwood on the New South Wales Southern Tablelands. The property has been in continuous use since the 1830s, when William Henry Roberts and his brother-in-law Andrew Badgery established a pastoral estate on the land. A dairy and wheat operation followed, and in 1859 Charles Edward Dransfield constructed a four-storey flour mill on the site using bricks manufactured on the property, granite sourced from the farm, and massive hardwood beams cut from the nearby Budawang Ranges. The engineering works, including the steam engine and milling equipment, were supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney. The mill opened in January 1860 as the Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills, serving a goldfield settlement of over 1,000 miners working along Jembaicumbene Creek. Milling operations ceased in 1885. Antony Davies and Andrew Gow began restoring the mill and homestead around 2008, an effort that continued for approximately 11 years. The lower floors of the mill were converted into the Wheatfield Gallery, exhibiting fine art, craft, and decorative arts. The property was listed for sale in 2019. The vehicle photographed here is not a building, not a listed structure, not a documented piece of machinery from the mill's working years. It is simply one of the things left on a working property that has accumulated more than 180 years of use. The paint is going. The metal underneath is not. The glass still holds the light from whatever is behind it.