A Place in Time: Dunlop Station
Dunlop Station’s homestead was built in the 1880s using concrete and local sandstone. It sits alongside the Darling River.
Words: Lesley Apps & Photography: Naya JeffriesIf you happened to find yourself waking up at Kim Chandler’s place it would be understandable to not only wonder where the heck you are for a moment, but also what year it is, such is the shrine to history this family residence holds.
The homestead Kim and her daughter Kodie call home, is part of historic Dunlop Station, situated on the Darling River near Louth New South Wales, about 100 kilometres out the back of Bourke—the kind of landscape that latter description famously defines as the ‘middle-of-nowhere’.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth. While it is isolated geographically, Dunlop certainly isn’t lonely when it come to human activity, especially now Kim and her family are in charge. Almost 12 years ago, it was their dream to find somewhere they could run a few sheep, do some fencing, and have a “little bit of a cottage to go with that.”
Instead, Kim and her then teenage children Kodie and James, came across a 10-bedroom homestead with a cellar; a virtual time capsule, encased in 60-foot of verandah. The place had been uninhabited for 25 years and was full to the brim with decades of household evidence, left behind by previous occupants. Remaining signs of life had taken up squatter’s rights—namely hoards of mice and their hungry nemesis, the snake.
Kim Chandler admits she didn’t know the historical significance of the station when she bought it - now it would be hard to find some one who knows more.
This unexpected house and land package also included the property’s old store and a huge 45-stand shearing shed all in the same condition as the main residence: neglected. “We didn’t realise what we’d fallen into until we moved in. The place was advertised as an old cheap property with potential, so when we found all the boxes of paperwork and newspapers, we thought—there’s a little bit more to this place than running few sheep.”
Read the rest of this story in Bush Journal 07.
Around 184,000 merinos were shorn in the woolshed in 1888, but the building has been quiet since 1993.
This is an excerpt from Issue 07,
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