The Big Hill

The Big Hill rises behind the Big Hill Post Office, a low sandstone ridge that gives both the road and the post office their name. The hill is bare of large trees, covered in dry grass and scattered eucalypts. The post office and its residence sit at the foot of the hill, set back from the gravel road that runs past. The buildings are low, single-storey timber, with iron-clad rooflines visible from the rise. The country around them is paddock with patches of bushland, grazed by cattle. A ute track runs from the road up the side of the hill toward a fence-line.

The Big Hill Post Office served the surrounding farms in the southern tablelands of NSW from the late nineteenth century until around 1945. The post office was the local link to the wider mail network and operated as a sub-post office under the postmaster who lived on site. When the population thinned out and the surrounding farms either consolidated or sold up, the post office lost its purpose and was closed. The buildings were left in place. The contents went largely undisturbed for the next seventy-plus years. The hill in this photograph is what is left to identify the location: a single landform that gave the post office its only address.