The Woolshed: Design and Construction

Jondaryan Woolshed represents a transition from pre-industrial methods of processing wool to today's highly-mechanised techniques.

Lloyd Hutchison records that Jondaryan Woolshed cost 3,300 pounds and when it was completed in 1861, it was the finest in the colony.

Left: This shows the remnants of the main highway which went past the front of the Woolshed in the late 19th century. Right: Red cedar gates.

The Woolshed was 300 feet long (91 metres), and in it 52 shearers and numerous other workers could process 3,000 sheep at a time. In 1892 it was still the biggest shed on the Darling Downs.

Shearing sheds were necessary in Queensland because when sheep were shorn in summer it was the wettest time of the year.

Wool needs to be dry for shearing. Imagine trying to shear 3,000 sheep at a time in the pouring sub-tropical rain.

Hutchison said Jondaryan Woolshed was a huge technical leap forward in controlled shearing. This included shearing, picking up, sorting, classing and packaging the clip.

"JC White, manager of Jondaryan for several owners, is probably most responsible."

Charles White had been employed in his younger years with the Colonial Architect's office in Sydney.

Jondaryan Woolshed is an example of a timber slab building.

Architect Richard Allom described the process:

"Logs were sawn, using a cross-cut saw into the necessary lengths then split by driving thin wedges into the log… The rough surfaces were then smoothed or dressed using an adze of squaring axe.

"The timber was cut green and as it dried shrunk… Indeed a whole tradition grew up around techniques to deal with the inevitable gaps and openings in slab-built structures to make them weather proof."

Originally intended to be a shingle roof, the Jondaryan Woolshed made use of a new material -- galvanised iron which had been hand-rolled, hand-dipped, hand-wrought and hand-corrugated.

Richard Allom said of the Jondaryan Woolshed that "the insistent plan repetition of modular structure and cladding finds resonance in the domestic vernacular architecture of Japan; the traditional 'long house' buildings of Indonesia; and the barn buildings of American and European pastoral and agricultural industry…

"Simply stated, the Australian woolshed; such as that vast structure at Jondaryan, has created an acute and lasting tradition within the Australian psyche and landscape.

"The woolshed speaks of simple and discrete solutions to functional processes of structure and enclosure.

"The 'woolshed traditional' lives on in Australia, not so much in the creation of new Australian woolsheds; but in the way this building type has informed our approaches to modern architecture."