Nuthaburra Stone

In Queanbeyan and Canberra we are lucky to have a wealth of talented Stonemasons with skills ubiquitous to the Monaro. When you buy Nuthaburra Stone, you're buying stone used and recommended by the best Stonemasons in the region. At Nuthaburra Stone we are keeping Stonemasonry alive. Stonemasonry is not a dying trade in Queanbeyan! We have been training apprentices for 37 years. Many who have gone on to form their own reputable businesses.

Our stone is sourced from our network of quarries throughout the region. From the coastal ranges to the East, the Snowy Mountains to the South, The Southwest slopes to our West, The Central West to our North West, The Southern Tablelands to our North and right here in the Monaro, your money supports jobs in our local, regional communites and stays in the country.

Most stone used in construction in Australia has been hauled many thousands of kilometres across the globe contributing to unnecesary carbon emmissions. Our stone comes from just down the road. We know the people we buy from and the conditions they work under. 

By 1998 when most manufacturers were shutting down we took the view that this was short sighted and would cause the loss of skills, knowledge and capacity, that would be difficult to recover from in the future. Despite that, the majority of Australian manufacturers swapped from making things to importing and trading. The future is here and we can see that we have lost an important ingredient in our economy. We are now at the behest of big importers who control a large market share with few alternatives to turn to.

We feel proud that we never closed our doors. It was really tough but we kept working hard and teaching our craft.

We believe in reducing our carbon footprint, manufacturing locally and rebuilding Australian skills and industry.

We are, first and foremost, Stonemasons. We cut and shape almost anything in stone. The only exception is benchtops and vanities. We can recommend AV Stone in Waterloo Street Queanbeyan for that. If you need a gravestone use Oskar Memorials for the best and friendliest satisfaction.

"It should be evident that our structures appear as if they grew out of the ground from the fabric of their locality"

Bluestone is a generic term referring to all hard stones. In short the antithesis of sandstone and limestone. We specialise in locally sourced Bluestone. This is easy because we live in Bluestone country. We are surrounded by Bluestone. Almost every masonry cottage , church and public building in our region is built of a type of Bluestone. Which is just as well, considering how susceptible sandstone is to frost damage over time. While we sell sandstone if you really want it, we will always direct you to a suitable Bluestone type. Why? We are not in sandstone country. Purchasing sandstone requires the consumption of megalitres of fossil fuels. We lament it's use in recent decades particularly in Canberra. We consider it's use an anomaly reflecting a period when fossil fuels were cheap. We wish to return to the sensible local manufacture and processing that existed before. We have returned to local production. We are preserving our knowledge and skills and training young Australians in our craft and industry. When you buy from us your money will not go off shore. It literally stays in the district. There are no Singaporean or Panamanian shelf companies and all our profits are taxed locally. The furthest afield your money goes is Australian taxes.

You will not find stone from any other country in our yard. We won't even send blocks to China to be cut up only to send them back as finished products. How can you verify that you are really buying Australian stone in that circumstance?

We want to continue on with developing a regional flavour in stone. It should be evident that our structures appear as if they grew out of the ground from the fabric of their locality. Our Bluestone is the ideal material for a closed loop building system. If in the future our Bluestone units are dismantled, they will still retain their value as reusable building fabric. Concrete, brick and sandstone are usually crushed and damaged during recycling, wasting all the fossil fuel energy that was expended in them in the first instance. Conversely, Bluestone units do not disintegrate or need to be crushed during recycling. In fact they are ready to reuse immediately. Not only that, they have oxidised over time revealing rich natural colours that are not extant in new stone.  

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