The Origins of Deepwater Station
Deepwater Station is on the traditional lands of the Ngarabul people.
Deepwater Station was taken up as a pastoral property in 1839 by the Windeyer family from Raymond Terrace.
After Archibald Windeyer’s death in 1870, Deepwater Station was bought by a family company consisting of John Donald Macansh (who was married to Archibald’s daughter Jane), John Windeyer and William Thomas Cadell.
At this time Deepwater Station was around 60,000 acres and ran 13,000 sheep and 300 cattle. For the next 60 years, the property was managed by various family members until 1943 when the family company was dissolved and the government resumed 16,000 acres of Deepwater Station for soldier settlement. The manager at the time Donald Patterson Macansh secured the homestead block along with an additional 2000 acres for himself. The property is still the same 4,000 acres and still owned and run by the Macansh Family.
Merino sheep breeding for fine/superfine wool and Hereford/Angus cross cattle breeding have remained the main enterprises on Deepwater Station.
c1880’s
The Shearing Shed
The Shearing Shed at Deepwater Station is a magnificent structure which is still in use today.
It took two men, 2 years full time to build the 80m x 20m timber shed in the mid 1880’s.
It is of a similar construction to the other buildings, in that it has a whole log and pit sawn timber frame with adzed vertical slab walls and shingle roof.
The first shearing in the shed was during 1888. At that stage, it was a U shaped blade shearing board designed for around 50 shearers. Though apparently, the numbers used to vary during shearing; If another shearer turned up they would just squeeze up a bit on the board to make room. A couple of the photos attached would have been in those very early years.
Around 1902 the first of the mechanical shearing gear came in. The board was converted to run 2 eight stand boards down the sides of the old ‘U’ shape. Moffat-Virtue overhead gear was installed run by a steam engine positioned on the western side of the shed. This set up kept the roustabouts on their toes as they had to remember to keep ducking under the drive belts that ran the gear on the other side of the shed on their way to and from the board.
After WWII it was very hard to get licensed steam engine operators so the steam engine was replaced by a single cylinder Lister diesel motor and the Moffat-Virtue overhead gear was replaced with the latest Sunbeam gear running a single 8 stand board. This gear is still in situ and in running order, however, we have recently changed over to using individual electric shearing plants.
c1870’s
The Stables
The best estimate of the building date of the stables is the early 1870’s. They were built to house the work and sulky horses and the various carts and sulkies they pulled. They were adapted a little later to also house the valuable “show bulls” which were purchased to use in the cattle breeding program.
The stables are a 2 storey building with a frame of whole log and some rough sawn timber; the interior and exterior walls are horizontal adzed slab. The upstairs loft was used to store hay for the horses which was then thrown directly down into the hayracks and mangers below.
The shingle roofs on all of these buildings are still intact under the corrugated iron.
c1860
Early Homestead
The original homestead for Deepwater Station was actually built some 3 km north of its current location on the banks of the Nukoorapeta Creek where the house on “Killarney” is now. To the best of our knowledge, there is nothing left of the original site. The settlement was moved after a few years as the creek was found to be an unreliable source of water. The Deepwater River at the current site was much more reliable.
This more recent homestead was built around 1860 in a similar style to the storeroom, with very similar dimensions but with a little more attention to detail and a few more finishing touches. The external walls are still vertical adzed slab with a moderately pitched shingle roof and a verandah on 3 sides but the windows and doors are more detailed and finished. The building is 11m by 5m with the same southern orientation towards the river. It is split into two bedrooms both with windows and doors that lead onto the southern verandah and back doors that lead over to the kitchen/dining building.
The back wall is actually missing and will hopefully be replaced when time and funds allow.
The interior is lined with pine panelling but this is a fairly recent addition; Don Macansh can remember the panelling going in during the late 1930’s. Prior to that, he remembers the lining being wallpaper on top of paper on top of hessian. There was a large double sided chimney in the middle of the building that formed part of the dividing wall. As was common practice, the kitchen was in a separate building just to the north of the bedrooms. This homestead was superseded in 1880 when the first house was built on the site where the current homestead is. This older homestead, however, stayed in use as jackeroo quarters when 3 more rooms were built on the northern side of the kitchen building and used by the unmarried staff.
c1840's
The Storerooms
The Storerooms were built pre 1850 and were used to store provisions for the staff and families on Deepwater Station. They were integral because the town of Deepwater, at this stage, did not exist. When the bullock drays would deliver wool to Grafton or Newcastle they would load up for the return trip with bulk stores for the Station. These provisions were stored in the storerooms and distributed weekly to family and staff as part of their wages.
The storerooms consist of one long building, 11m by 5m with verandahs on 3 sides. As with most of the timber buildings on Deepwater Station it has vertical timber slab walls and a shingle roof. The building is divided into 3 rooms, each with a different interior depending on the provisions that were stored in them.
The meat room, in the middle, has a rail suspended from the ceiling that runs along 3 walls for hanging carcases. The cracks between the slabs are covered on the inside with strips of tin to exclude flies and vermin. These, however, would have been a later addition; around the late 1890’s or early 1900’s. We are not sure what the walls would have been lined with originally but most probably paper and hessian.
The general store, on the eastern end, was used to store mostly dry foods such as flour and tea. Don Macansh remembers that they stocked 3 grades of tea; The top grade for the homestead, the middle grade for the employees and the lower grade for the swaggies, travellers and itinerants. Again, we are not sure what the original lining was, but at a later stage the room was, and still is, fully lined with tin.
The small room on the end was most likely used as a saddle and harness room, which is a little confusing as the stables are about 250m away. The walls are not lined and there are no storage shelves but there are pegs on the walls which would have been suitable for hanging saddles. Apparently, in later days, the workmen that lived in Deepwater used this room to store their push bikes during the work day. Access to the loft is via this room. The ceiling, which provides the floor for the loft, does not extend to this room so access can be gained via a ladder through a doorway in the end wall of the loft. The loft was most likely used as living quarters as a proper floor has been put down. There are no windows or walls, just the pitched roof cavity.
There is a verandah along the southern side and both ends of the building. A leanto was built under the verandah on the eastern side which originally must have been accommodation as there was a fireplace on the eastern end.