Kitchen

The kitchen at Woolla has a low ceiling of corrugated iron over rough-hewn beams and wide timber floorboards worn smooth in the centre of the room. A meat safe stands against the far wall. Beside it, a wooden table holds a few cast iron pots, a kettle, and a handful of small tools left in place. The walls are split-slab hardwood, the slabs running horizontal, fitted tight against each other. There is no stove anywhere in the room. There never was. An open fire with cast iron kettles and camp ovens did the cooking work for the full life of the hut. Light enters through one small window and falls in a thin band across the boards.

Woolla sits on the Deua River near Braidwood, in southern NSW. Helena (Nellie) Davis took up the freehold in 1910, and the original huts were completed in 1927, when she moved in with her son Everid and daughter Neta. The Davis family stayed in continuous occupation until 1990, the year Neta died at Woolla and her son Vern was moved to a nursing home in Braidwood. Vern and Neta were among the last Australians to live a colonial-style rural life through to its actual end. The kitchen has not been altered since the family left. The property is in safe hands under the current owner and came through the 2019 to 2020 Black Summer bushfires intact. Brett photographed the kitchen at Woolla on 29 December 2021.