Life As It Was

A bedroom at the Big Hill Post Office contains the belongings left in place when the postmaster's family moved out. A timber dresser stands against the back wall, its drawers half-open. A pair of boots sits on the floor beside the bed-frame. A few items of folded clothing rest on the dresser top. The mattress has been removed. The walls are plastered with old newspapers, the standard treatment for timber-slab houses to keep the wind out. The newspapers are yellowed and pulling away in places. The light in the room comes from a single window with a torn curtain.

The post office and its residence were closed around 1945. The reasons are not fully recorded, but the building was effectively abandoned by its last occupants without any formal handover or clear-out. The dresser, the boots, the folded clothing, and the newspapered walls have all been here since. The ownership of the property has changed several times over the decades. None of the subsequent owners have done much to the interior of the residence. The contents are not staged or preserved. They are simply what was left behind in the moment of closure, and what nobody has had occasion to remove since. The room reads as a record of one specific working day.