Grace Bros Hatboxes

A stack of Grace Bros. hatboxes, their labelling faded and the cardboard worn at the corners, sits beside a green canvas suitcase with metal latches and a leather handle. The objects rest against a rendered wall in Moruya, New South Wales. They are the kind of domestic storage that was ordinary across rural Australia for most of the twentieth century.

The Woolla series documents a pair of hand-split slab huts on the Deua River, south of Braidwood in the NSW Southern Tablelands. Helena (Nellie) Davis took up freehold title to the land in 1910. The original huts were completed in 1927, and Nellie moved in with her son Everid and her daughter Neta. Neta's son Vern was born at Woolla in 1928, and her daughter Myrtle in 1930. The Davis family held the property continuously from 1910 until Vern died in Braidwood Hospital in 2004.

Inside the huts, Vern and Neta kept their clothes in suitcases. There were no wardrobes. That was their method, and it remained their method until Neta died at Woolla in 1990 and Vern was moved to a nursing home in Braidwood the same year. The suitcases are still there.

The huts were constructed from timber cut on the property. Newsprint was pasted behind the wallpaper to seal the gaps between the slabs. Calendars from local Braidwood, Goulburn, Moruya, and Batemans Bay businesses cover the walls, running from 1972 through 1991. They were Vern's choice of decoration, not a heritage display.

The Woolla series was photographed in 2021. The Grace Bros. hatboxes and suitcase in this frame were photographed separately in Moruya. They are not objects from the Woolla property. What they share with the huts on the Deua River is the era they come from and the ordinary domestic life they represent.