Feels like home ... Mary Moody's Glenray Park for sale

Some people buy real estate with their feet planted firmly on the ground. It’s all about the numbers – the bottom line, the investment and the potential to increase in value and realise a profit. 

Others (like me) buy with the heart. It’s an emotional thing, a feeling that’s hard to describe. A place that is not just a house or a garden; a paddock or a roomy shed. It’s home.

The first time I drove over Frying Pan Creek and up the tree-lined driveway of ‘Glenray Park’ in Yetholme, I knew it would be our home. 

Back in January 2001, my husband David Hannay and I were just putting out feelers in this region – an area we had visited often since the early 1970s. We had lovely friends in Sunny Corner and  Carcoar, and we were drawn to the beauty of the rolling hills.  

We had lived in Leura for 27 years and always had a deep feel for ‘the mountains’, without really understanding that the mountains spread much further west than most people realise. The altitude at Yetholme is higher than at Mt Victoria. We get more snow, more frosts and more dramatic sunsets. 

In the 1960s there were two hotels – Frying Pan Inn and The Goldiggers Arms, and St Paul’s Anglican Church was built in 1836. In those days it was believed the village would prosper, with a new school and plans for shops and other facilities. 

However this didn’t eventuate and Yetholme remained a sleepy hamlet – a place time forgot – which is a great part of its charm. 

In autumn the roadside trees turn brilliant shades of red and orange and if you venture up the escarpment to the now defunct trig station, you will get dramatic views of the western plains. 

The homestead of ‘Glenray Park’ was built by the Mabel Walshaw and her family some time between 1908 -1912 and was originally called Ickleton, after the small English village their ancestors had left behind. 

I was immediately attracted to the house, which is spacious yet has cosy rooms with open fireplaces, wide verandahs edged with marble and ornate plaster ceilings that remain in fantastic condition. 

From my first visit I could picture myself cooking on the fuel stove and I loved the old-fashioned features, including a massive walk in pantry and small servery through which the housekeeper would have handed platters of food to the family seated in the formal dining room. 

The original housekeepers ‘quarters’ at rear of the house, have been converted into a comfortable family room with a slow combustion wood stove and window seat.

However, what clinched it for me – the moment when I knew I wanted to live on this property – was when we were shown the community dance hall that Mabel built in 1923. 

She was a very public spirited woman, and perceiving the lack of a gathering place for the farming community, she erected a hall with a stage, open fireplace and those quaint timber shelves above head height where, no doubt, beers were left while neighbours stepped the barn dance.

Yetholme is fortunate in its water supply, so important when you have a big house, a garden and paddocks with stock (I have goats, a couple of sheep and two alpacas that guard the large poultry run). 

There are many underground springs, and we have a deep one that allows us to pump up water to a holding tank, as well as a good size dam and, of course, Frying Pan Creek which runs across the front of the farm. 

We pump water to the stock and don’t allow them to cause environmental damage by trampling the creek edges, the wetland or any other fragile areas. 

We have regenerated an area at the back of the farm with native species, and I have been working with the Central Tablelands Local Land Services to clear the willows and plant the creek banks with the original species. 

I hope that in 15 years  platypus may again swim in this creek, as they did before white settlement. 

We have created a wildlife corridor and enjoy the company of wallaroos, grey kangaroos, wombats and echidnas. Needless to say, the birdlife is extraordinary, and I never tire of the flocks around the paddocks and in the garden.

I have loved every moment of living here, growing a garden, nurturing the environment and providing a spacious place for my 11 grandchildren to play and explore. 

Sadly, David died last year, and I have decided to move closer to my family in the Mountains. I have a small block of land in the district, where I will build a ‘writer’s retreat’ so that I don’t lose my precious connection with this area, and all my Yetholme and Bathurst friends. 

The property is listed with Ray White Oberon.

– Mary Moody is the author of a number of books and a former presenter on Gardening Australia