Timber Slab Hut

The two slab huts at Woolla sit on a bend of the Deua River south of Braidwood, beneath a single large tree. The timber was cut from the property itself, hand-split and assembled into walls that were then lined with newsprint to seal the gaps before wallpaper went over the top. Phil Rose, a Narooma-based architect, documented the configuration in a measured drawing made in January 2008: one hut containing the kitchen, a second holding three sleeping rooms, both structures beneath the one canopy.

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 Deua River Track, a bridle and packhorse route running nearly 50 kilometres from the Araluen Creek confluence south to Bendethera, remained the only means of access for the Davis family until the 1960s. Supplies came in every three to four months, via packhorse from Waddell's on the Araluen-Moruya road.

Nellie died in 1977. Everid had already left for Sydney, dying there in the mid-1980s. Neta died at Woolla in 1990. That same year Vern, diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, was moved to a nursing home in Braidwood. Myrtle had long since left to run her own cattle property; she died in Braidwood in 2015. Vern died there in 2004, the last of the family at Woolla, closing a continuous Davis family ownership that had run from 1910.

The property passed to its current owners, who live in a modern house on the same land and have kept the huts from falling. Emergency remediation work was done; maintenance continues. The huts were not restored. They were held. Woolla came through the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires intact.

This photograph was made in 2021. The porch holds a woven basket, a tin box and a low timber stool. The large tree overhead is still standing.