LYNN and Rowan Mason’s home at Torrumbarry, in Northern Victoria, is a tribute to the Australian shearing shed.
LYNN Mason had never stepped foot inside a shearing shed.
But that didn’t stop her from designing her family’s new home in Torrumbarry, near Echuca, based on the iconic Australian agricultural building.
The result is now affectionately known by locals and visitors as the Shearing Shed, not least because it features a five-meter-long shearing plant on the ceiling, complete with rolling wheels and shearing gear.
“I found it for sale online from a clearing sale and paid $200 for it,” Lynn says.
“It was incorporated into the building and we had to have a big beam up to keep it there.
“We had a couple of old shearers come in the house and they couldn’t believe we hadn’t converted an old shearing shed.”
Situated on their 1ha property, which fronts the Murray River, the Shearing Shed was designed by Lynn, who worked with local tradesmen, such as cabinet-maker Brendan Kelly from Echuca’s Kelly’s Fine Furniture.
Lynn, her husband Rowan and four children moved in in 2011.
The four-bedroom home has a giant living area at its epicentre, with floors from recycled spotted gum polished by lanolin oil, all under the five-metre shearing gear.
The home, which even has its own Facebook site, is surrounded by corrugated iron, with the same material used in the ensuite, where the bath is a cut-out water tank.
A kitchen bar bench was designed by the cabinet-maker to resemble a wool sorting table, with the kitchen cupboards using perforated metal inserts to resemble a meat safe, with handles made from old nails from the railways.
Most of the home is built using recycled timbers and materials, down to the living room light.
“My son (Dale) is a steel fabricator and he made loops of welded metal and I surrounded it in a big ball of barbed wire. I got a long chain for $4 from the Moama market to hold it up,” the 56-year-old says.
“Dale made the front door too — it’s a sliding door made to look like a barn door.”
In the hall there’s a stack of old 1930s butter boxes, salvaged from Rowan’s father’s factory, stacked randomly to create a wall unit.
Shearing photos from photographer Andrew Chapman, renowned for his woolshed series, feature on the walls.
The Shearing Shed is more formally called Trishlida on Dhungala, a combination of names of the Masons’ four children, and Dhungala is the Yorta Yorta word for Murray River.
From September the house will be let out for accommodation and on May 17 the Masons will hold an open day to raise money for juvenile diabetes.
“Since building the home I’ve been in a shearing shed, thanks to a local electrician, whose family has the oldest shearing shed in the district.
“I organised with his father to use his wool bale stencils on hessian I’d bought, which is now the splashback in the kitchen.
“I hadn’t been in a shearing shed when designing it, but in the end this is a house. While we want it to look like a shearing shed we want it to function as our home, not a museum.”
Despite the effort that has gone into the building, the family only stay there on weekends, commuting from their home in Melbourne, where Lynn works in marketing at a school in Eltham and Rowan is a manager for an automotive electrical parts company. The aim is to retire to the property.
“We love the climate, the beautiful clear, dry, arid heat and we like being in the middle of nowhere.
“My favourite thing is to sit on the veranda and look out to the view or at the house.”