Abattoir Managers Quarters Colour:White Catwalk at Ashio

Catwalk at Ashio

structures that mark where selector families once put down roots and where the land has since moved on without them

photographed in 2016 after a decade of abandonment

its keys fused and blackened by fire

designed by Colonial Architect James Barnet on the principle that the building itself was part of the cure

Abattoir Managers Quarters Colour:White Catwalk at AshioA timber cottage with a rusted corrugated iron roof sits low in a hollow, half consumed by scrub, with power lines crossing the hill above and a dirt track climbing behind. Structures like this one represent the selector's gamble that played out across rural New South Wales from the 1860s onward: 320 acres at a pound an acre, three years' residence, and whatever the land would give. Part of the A Place to Call Home series.