Change Of Pace

Searching for a NSW weekender to escape the city snarl took one family blissfully off course.

- Natalie Walton

Sydneysiders Merrilyn and her husband Tony had been looking for a place to escape with their four children on weekends for six months. After scouring Sydney’s Northern Beaches, the couple did an about-turn on the location. Refocusing the search were Tony’s nostalgia for his childhood, when he spent a lot of time on relatives’ farms in Tasmania, and his daughter’s growing interest in horse riding. Their second home also had to be within an hour’s commute from Sydney and easily accessible from the freeway.

The couple found a 20ha property in the Cooranbong Valley with an established home and gardens, close to a town with reasonable services. Its location, on the edge of Watagans National Park, was beautiful, and the previous owners had operated a horse stud there.

Five years on, considerable time and effort has been spent on making improvements in the home, renovating the machinery shed, stables and wash bay, replacing fences and upgrading the access road and dressage area. The house gets its water supply from rainwater tanks while the gardens and stock are fed from the dam; firehazard reduction is another area they’ve tackled. “The list goes on!” says Merrilyn.