A Legendary Day In Melbourne

Nainaa Rajpal spends a day on the outskirts of Melbourne to discover an incredible and rare piece of Australia’s colonial past that you can still experience today. Horse lovers, you will absolutely love it.

- Nainaa Rajpal

When the Europeans arrived in Australia, a land so far from their own, they brought pieces of their own country and replanted them here— perhaps to ease their life in a fairly harsh landscape. Especially since many of them came from the gentle English countryside with all its lacy comforts, and were flung into the deep end of the Southern Hemisphere. Australia was a wild land, teeming with snakes, crocodiles and an unforgiving sun that shone long and hard.

So, it must come as no surprise that the European settlers sometimes strung along things that would make them feel at home—mostly their favourite tree saplings, horses and timber-made ‘kit houses.’

To uncover a different side to the coffee-guzzling, graffiti-inked Melbourne I knew, I decided to make a day trip to the Woodlands Historic Park that promised to offer a peek into Australia’s colonial past, complete with original landscapes that welcomed early settlers in the 1800s.

Driving through the gates of the park, merely six minutes from Melbourne’s bustling Tullamarine airport, I was good and befuddled. I could have sworn I was passing through rural England, as I watched sinewy horses tear across bottle green meadows, while a quaint windmill silently whirled in the distance.

I pulled over outside the Woodlands Homestead, which packs a pretty historic punch. Originally meant to reach India, it was brought from England in the year 1843 for William Greene, a royal Navy officer, and his wife Anne. They were eager to leave behind the tempestuous Irish weather and landed in sunny Australia with their seven children, a governess, butler, two grooms, and a handful of domestic staff—apart from two thoroughbred horses and stud cattle.