The 2025 Week 3 Restoration Works

The season seems to be getting busier with plenty of visitors passing through Farina.

This week saw Farina getting ready for the Cricket match on Saturday, had a visit from the Maree School kids, continued preparation of NSU62 for painting, started restoration work on the Windmill from Well No 2, and of course continued with stonework.

The Farina Restoration Group is very keen to maintain links with the local community, and engages with the schools in Leigh Creek and Maree to arrange for the kids to visit Farina during the work program. This week we saw kids from the school at Maree spend a day at Farina learning about bread making and stonework, and making some drawings of the sheep and cattle wagons.

As you see in the photos of the school students visiting, the Stonework at Farina continued on the Post Office, with the photos below showing a before and after shot of the restoration of one of the stone fireplace hearths by Tom.

By the end of Week 3 the first top coat of Red paint was being applied to NSU62.

Water was essential for Farina from the start, and although containing high levels of salt, was still used by a number of residents and for stock water. Better quality drinking water was transported in from places like Beltana. This week saw the start of work on the old Windmill that was in place at Well No 2, and was blown over and damaged in a storm. It’s going to take some work to get it into a reasonable condition.

It takes a large quantity of supplies to keep the Farina Bakery in operation, and also materials needed for the restoration works around the site. There is always at least one delivery a week and some of them occur in the dark during the evening, although this weeks was during the day.

Another highlight of the week for Volunteers is the Wednesday dinner, and of course the nightly campfire “Happy Hour” meetings.

And what Farina week would be complete without a beautiful sunrise and a little shower of rain. There was a magnificent rainbow for a while, and just enough rain to settle the dust.