Cathcart Woolshed

The photograph was made in 2018 inside a corrugated iron woolshed somewhere in rural NSW. Light pushes through gaps in the iron cladding along the walls, striping the floor and the lower framing in alternating bands of light and shadow. The timber overhead runs in long spans, local hardwood by its density and colour, mortised and lapped in the way these structures were assembled through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The space is large and unoccupied. Whatever fittings once defined it as a working floor have been removed or left to settle quietly into disuse. Woolsheds of this type were the operational centre of any sheep-running property. The corrugated galvanised iron cladding that sheathes this one became the standard material for rural Australian buildings from the 1850s onward, chosen for durability and low maintenance in a climate that could be brutal on timber and bark. The frame beneath it was typically local hardwood: red gum, ironbark, or stringybark depending on the region. A shed of this scale would have contained catching pens, a series of shearing stands running the length of the board, a wool room for skirting and classing the fleece, and at least one wool press for baling. The shearing season in NSW traditionally ran through spring, employing itinerant teams who moved from property to property as the clip came in. Many sheds like this one fell out of regular use from the 1970s onward, as smaller properties consolidated or shifted land use. What remains is the structure itself: the span of the roof, the weight of the frame, and the light working its way in through the iron. The Woolshed series documents these buildings across NSW as they stand now.