Main Bedroom

A timber-framed single bed stands against patterned wallpaper in the main bedroom at Woolla, the original woven bedspread still spread flat across the mattress. Suitcases crowd the floor at the bed's end. Leather cases, hatboxes and travel trunks are stacked two deep beside the frame. The wallpaper has split along the joins where moisture has worked through behind it, but the pattern remains legible across the intact sections. A small window admits a soft, even light from the home paddock outside. The bed and the suitcases are the older furniture in the room. Smaller items on the side table and shelving have been set in place by the current owner in the years since the family left.

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 stored their clothes in suitcases rather than wardrobes for the full duration of their occupation, which ran continuously until 1990. Vern, Neta's son, was born here in 1928. Vern and Neta were among the last Australians to live a colonial-style rural life through to its actual end. The property is in safe hands under the current owner and came through the 2019 to 2020 Black Summer bushfires intact. Brett photographed the main bedroom at Woolla on 29 December 2021.