St Clair, an 1882 grand Victorian homestead listing at Lake Bathurst
Stud cattle breeders Peter and Margie Mullins are selling St Clair, their 1882 Victorian homestead on 101 hectares at Lake Bathurst.
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The mansion, located on Braidwood Road some 80 kilometres north of Canberra, has eight bedrooms and four bathrooms.
It was built for the Badgery family, who left the property in 1904.
The property has had four owners since including the Coombes family until the early 1920s during, which it was known as Font Hill.
The story goes that the Coombes spent half the year in Italy and introduced the Italian influence of the terracing in the garden.
The Maple-Brown family took over from the Coombes for the next 20 years and developed the Font Hill merino sheep bloodline.
Upstairs pictures on page 2
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The Crace family purchased the property in 1944 after selling the last leases of their family property, Gunghalin Station, in the ACT.
The Craces renamed the property Bongalabi in 1959 as the Maple-Brown family took the name Font Hill when the family and merino stud moved to Springfield some 10 kms away.
The current owners purchased the property in 1985 and developed one of Australia’s leading poll Devon cattle studs.
The garden comes with more than 400 rose bushes amid seven acres (2.8 hectares) of parkland-style grounds developed over 120 years, and for two decades part of Australia's Open Garden Scheme.
The grounds comes with ant-bed tennis court built in the 1920s, original coach house comprising tool shed, garages, tack and feed rooms, along with three stables, large sand round-yard, standard sand dressage arena, machinery shed and six horse paddocks.
There are two weatherboard 1940s cottages that are currently tenanted.
St Clair is listed with Helen Cheetham and Tronn Alstergren of Tronn Alstergren Real Estate at $2.85 million.
They suggest while the offering is currently home to a Devon cattle stud, St Clair would be an equally fine sheep property. A further 927 acres (375 hectares) is available on separate title, including cattle yards for 300 head and a four-stand woolshed.
