One of the landmark buildings around Wonyip has for many years been the big barn that was built by my father Gordon and local farmers, Bob and Dooley Clarke. It is quite big, really an amazing achievement for two men to have built it. I am not sure of the total height but the top floor area is about 20 x 60 feet. The ground floor is about 24 feet wider. It is built from mountain ash timber felled from the back of our property and assembled without the aid of large cranes. With typical ingenuity, dad rigged up a system of pulleys and hoists and in conjunction with a small lifter on the back of Bobs tractor, it got done.

Always a work in progress, it never quite got finished before dads death, and has existed in it’s present form for many years. The large upstairs area has never been floored and one end has big holes intended for large windows that were never installed. This year we have decided to act on our long held plan to finish off the upstairs section and also fix some of the degraded sections of the roof and windows. The downstairs area also has become a bit of a mess with a mix of interesting things and discarded rubbish, so that needs to be sorted too.

Ever one to use second hand materials, dad had set up the top floor area with floor joists that had hundreds of rusty nails poking out the top. First job for us was to cut those off and ready the area for flooring.