The ruins themselves are quite un prepossessing and closely resem­ble the foundations of buildings built during the brief but booming years of Ben Boyd’s grazing and whaling enterprises around the south coast area.

Diaries by Boyd’s manager, Brierly, recall that building materials were transported by wagons southwards along the coast from Boydtown, Boyd’s burgeoning township close to the present township of Eden. This information and the style and measurements of the building indicates that it was the beginning of an outpost begun by Boyd prior to the col­lapse of his empire in 1849. The age of the trees inside the walls also sug­gest that they began to grow not long after Boyd’s bankruptcy and subse­quent flight from Australia.