The Southern Highlands Estate was the first project where we got to work at length with Ross Henderson, a third-generation stonemason whose grandfather walled half the original Bowral estates between the wars.
On On Site
Hand-split granite walling looks straightforward in photographs and is anything but. The stones are not dressed; they are read. Ross would walk a freshly-arrived pallet for ten minutes before laying a single course, sorting the stones in his head by shape, weight and the way one face wanted to face out. The mortar joints, where they appear at all, are an afterthought — the walls hold up because the stones are talking to each other, not because anything is sticking them together.
“Working with hand-split granite on the Southern Highlands Estate — what we learned from the third-generation stonemason who walled the property.”
Watching this work changed the way we draw walls on plan. We had been specifying coursing heights and mortar gauges as if walling were assembly. It is closer to weaving. The drawings we issued for the later phases of the estate carried much less specification and much more intent — a paragraph for the mason rather than a section.
The walls have now been in the ground for three winters. They have not moved.
