Old Timber Home device The Alleyway at Lake Macquarie

The Alleyway at Lake Macquarie

A single window frames a quiet pastoral landscape through weathered timbers

a detail of domestic life left behind when the Victoria Road venue closed in March 2010

needles resting mid-scale

Old Timber Home device The Alleyway at Lake MacquarieWeathered timber walls and a collapsing roof mark this abandoned dwelling in rural New South Wales, one of 59 structures Brett Patman photographed across the Snowy Monaro and Hunter Valley between 2016 and 2019. Buildings like this one represent the full arc of pastoral settlement: selector's cottages staked on 320 acre gambles, shearers' quarters, and family homesteads that emptied out across three generations of drought, displacement, and economic