Abattoir Managers Quarters tap Double steel doors open onto

Double steel doors open onto a second room beyond

built from local hardwood and galvanised iron from the 1850s onward

debris scattered across the matting

Bowenfels at New South Wales

Abattoir Managers Quarters tap Double steel doors open ontoA 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.