Jimenbuen Woolshed

The Jimenbuen Woolshed sits on the Snowy Monaro tablelands of southern NSW, a long timber building set into a working pastoral run. The walls are split-slab vertical timbers, weathered grey and silvered by sun and frost. The roof is corrugated iron, dark with age, with a clerestory that runs the length of the ridge to vent heat from the shearing floor below. The framing of the timber doors is wide enough to drive a sheep dog through. Behind the shed the paddocks roll away in dry yellow grass. There are no other buildings in the frame.

Jimenbuen Station is one of the older grazing properties in this part of the Monaro. The woolshed dates from when the region was largely run as sheep country. It is still in working order: sheep are still drafted, drenched, and shorn here in season. The interior smells of lanolin and dust, and the floorboards are dark with decades of grease worked into them. Wool from this country went out by rail to Sydney through most of the twentieth century, loaded at the local siding and graded at port for the international auction houses. The Jimenbuen woolshed has done more than a century of work, and was still doing it when this photograph was made in 2018.