Macquarie farm near Bathurst looking for its fourth owner in more than 200 years
One of the oldest farms in the country, Macquarie, has hit the market after a painstaking, five-year restoration.
The owners, Paul and Bonny Hennessy, bought the 205-year-old property – 12 kilometres south-east of Bathurst, in the NSW Central West – in 2012 and began restoring the heritage-listed site as a “personal project”, Ray White Emms Mooney agent Bill Marshall said.
“Nobody else was going to do it, so they felt that they had to do it,” he said.
“They’ve done probably as much as they’re able to do and as much as (they) need to do.”
The farm on O’Connell Road, O’Connell, has only had three owners since the land was granted to William Lawson in 1814 and the homestead built in 1820, and Mr Marshall noted that the previous owner had held it for more than 100 years. It’s believed to be the first farm west of the Great Dividing Range.
“But there was nobody really working it and the property itself was being leased out. There wasn’t really anyone dedicated to the house,” he said.
When the Hennessys took it over, they committed significant resources to restore the 466-hectare farm, which includes a 27-room homestead, the original two-storey convict barracks, a shearers quarters now converted as a three-bedroom cottage, as well as another one-bedroom workers cottage.
More than 160 hectares are alluvial river flats, while the rest of the land is cleared and gently undulating. It comes with a 140-megalitre irrigation licence, three-stand woolshed, large machinery shed, and sheep and cattle yards.
“They had put in completely new drainage, plumbing for the house, electrics, everything,” Mr Marshall said.
“It’s still recognisable as the house it was 200 years ago.”
And while the Hennessys have invested considerable effort to re-establish the estate, they believe it is time to move on.
“The renovation work has been a labour of love, it has been long and exhausting project and the owners have decided that it is time for them to move on,” Mr Marshall said.
While Mr Marshall, who is selling the property with colleague Pat Bird, said it was difficult to give an accurate assessment of the sale price in the current market, he did say that there had been good interest in properties of this size in the local area and quoted a recent sale of the 404-hectare ‘Kenda Park’, about four kilometres away, to support this. ‘Kenda Park’ sold at auction about a month ago for $7.1m.
In 1814, Governor Lachlan Macquarie granted the land to Lieutenant William Lawson to reward him for his contribution – along with Gregory Blaxland and William Charles Wentworth – in the first known European crossing of the Blue Mountains in 1813, according to heritage records.
Lawson, who went on to become a member of the NSW Legislative Council, then constructed the homestead and other buildings on the land and named the site after Macquarie to honour the governor’s stay at the property in 1821.
Convict labour was used to construct the homestead and convict barracks, using bricks manufactured on the site.
The McKibbin family purchased the property in 1917, though it took up to 10 years for the transfer to be fully completed due to the intricacy of the land titles.
Macquarie will be sold under the hammer on July 5.
