Mole Creek’s Lyn Stedman mightn't be the only professional female dry stone wall builder in Australia, but one suspects she’s one of a select few.
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The craft involves constructing a wall from interlocking stones without the use of mortar, and takes about a day to complete a metre of wall.
Since taking up dry stone walling seven years ago, Mrs Stedman has developed a love for the historic trade.
“I started off just doing it as a hobby and then began working with Andrew Garner, James Boxhall and John Boland, and we did a couple of jobs in the Midlands to start with,” Mrs Stedman said.
“Amateurs can start with reading a book or getting a couple of lessons or something like that but to really learn it it's a lifelong trade – I feel like I'm still learning after seven years.”
Mrs Stedman said she had been commissioned to undertake jobs that took as little as a day and as long as nine months.
“One of the hardest things is starting with your foundations and getting those in place because your biggest rocks go at the bottom and they get a bit smaller as you go up, except for what they call through stones that go from one side of the wall to the other and they can be quite large and pretty heavy.”
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