The mystery of rural Australia: What of these long-abandoned cottages?

If this place was in Victoria’s groovy goldfields region, or near Bellingen, Berriedale or Ballina in New South Wales, it would have been tarted up to a high degree of rustic cuteness by now. With a new living/dining extension and in such locations it would be worth a fortune.

Yet, like thousands of 19th century cottages and farm buildings scattered across the bypassed backblocks of rural Australia, it has been so long abandoned that in another few years, it could be no more than a pile of corrugated iron that slaps and screeches whenever a strong wind whips across the paddocks.

When was it built? In the 1870s or ’80s when the pastoral districts were being more intensively settled and when a small blocky’s holding – mixing, say, crops and sheep across a cleared 350 acres – could feasibly support a farming family through a good year.

The rusting discs of the old plough share are in a pile by the back verandah, and up the weaving, cart-wheel rutted track, a small, corrugated iron shearing shed stands silvery and still apparently strong against the blue horizon, near where the one stately eucalypt makes a last stand for the original forest.

Probably the cottage was built of locally-milled, rough-dressed timber by the farmer himself. Of a simple, utilitarian form, it was certainly a step up from the pioneer’s bark hut or wattle and daub cabin. And though humble in size, with only three rooms that would fit into a modern living room, it displays a degree of pride. The inside walls are timber-lined with a fancy dado surround of vertical boards. No whitewashed hessian in here.

It was certainly a warm home through what obviously could be cold winters in Victoria’s central west. For in that small confine of rooms there are three fireplaces. One was the wood-fuelled, one-fire stove alcove where the rabbit and mutton stews were slow-cooked in the big cast-iron pots, and where the black kettle was continually on the boil. The crockery dresser is long gone leaving only a shadow on the timber.

Red brick and still robustly upright however, the chimneys will be the last items standing when the old place inevitably does disintegrate.

Considering it’s probably been empty since the farming districts commenced consolidating sometime in the 1940s — a carbon dating made possible by the lack of any evidence that power, water or telephone ever reached this place, the floorboards are in good shape, and fairly even, considering they are laid over truncated tree stumps.

The few missing boards show that the stump holes were hand-dug and that dusty underfloor suggests too strongly the presence of young snakes in spring, and of panting, scratching, stretched-out working dogs seeking shelter in summer.

Planted in the platinum-dried grass paddock, this little house would have been hot in high summer. The shallow, bull-nosed veranda awning may have kept the mid-day sun off the front walls and windows, but the place would have fairly baked in February, unless there were some shady trees.

The must have been shady trees because the farmer’s wife would have needed a fruiting orchard to make her jams and preserves. She would also have needed to grow what vegetables she could in a kitchen garden, for there was no supermarket within coo-ee and an expedition by cart to the nearest town that could feasibly support a post office and a supply store, would have taken the best part of a day.

Presumably she milked a house cow and churned her own butter while her man, who was routinely working 60 hour weeks out in the paddocks, or up in the shed where, as farmers are wont to do he would be tinkering with the farming implements. Each family member would have had chores: the farmer’s wife keeping house and food supplies, the children feeding the chooks and finding their eggs.

Like the wash-house and the dunny, both of which would have been remote from the house, the tank footings have returned to dust. There is no concrete footprint here at all, so whatever cluster of rudimentary outbuildings were originally associated with the cottage probably had dirt floors made hard and shiny through use.

Was there a wash-house? Or was a tin bath hauled inside and filled with hot water from the kettle before being shared in the family’s weekly body wash. Farmer in first, kids in last.

By the evidence of the wide hollow on the wooden threshold of the backdoor, most of the traffic of this house came and went by the back door. The front door was shut firm. But the back door was wide open and inviting of a nostalgic reverie about all the life that had been lived within the walls of this far away and forgotten country cottage.