Side Bedroom Window

The window of the side bedroom at Woolla looks out across the home paddock toward the bush line beyond. It is a small timber-framed sash with four panes, set into the split-slab wall at standing height. The panes are intact but coated with dust on the inside and pollen and rain on the outside. The timber sash is unpainted, weathered to a soft grey across decades of bushland exposure. The slabs around the window are horizontal hardwood, fitted tight and notched at the frame. Through the glass, morning light falls across the bedroom floor in a thin rectangle.

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, hand-built from horizontal split slabs of local timber under a corrugated iron roof. The roofing was brought in by horse-drawn slide over country too rough for vehicles until well into the 1960s. The Davis family lived here in continuous occupation until 1990. Vern and Neta were among the last Australians to live a colonial-style rural life through to its actual end. The window is part of the original 1927 build. The property is in safe hands under the current owner and came through the 2019 to 2020 Black Summer bushfires intact. Brett photographed the side bedroom window at Woolla on 29 December 2021.