The much-admired 1904 Nyrang Homestead at Molong has been listed for sale with $1.5 million hopes.
Regarded as one of the finest examples of Australian architecture and construction, it’s a 34-room, 120-square (1,116-square metre) mansion built of bluestone that was hand-cut on the property west of Orange.
It was built for the Kater pastoralist family, with Mount Canobolas forming the backdrop for views from its veranda in the hamlet of Borenore.
Nyrang was once a 6,000-acre sheep-grazing property on some of the richest soil on the western side of the Great Divide.
The 12-bedroom house has polished floorboards, high ceilings, 14 fireplaces and stained glass windows. It was the work of craftsmen who built the gracious asymmetrical bungalow in the classical revivalism style of the period possibly to a design by Cyril Blacket, son of the architect Edmund Blacket.
There’s a school house restored for guest accommodation and a workmans cottage.
The Urbanski family bought it in the mid-1990s purchase and turned the house into high-class heritage bed-and-breakfast accommodation with oversite by Stephen Sykes, the onetime chair of Central NSW Tourism. It’s offered as an “early Australian homestead experience.”
Its grounds also comes with five hectares of productive vineyard given water from Boree Creek. It has plantings of shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, ruby cabernet, sauvignon blanc, merlot, chardonnay, pinot noir and sangiovese. The eight-variety vineyard has the wine label, Barton Creek.
There’s old stables and a shearing shed on the 60 hectare holding.
There are 40 acres of creek flats suitable for lucerne.
Tenders close late January 2013 with Jim Oates at First National Williams Machin Orange .
The property’s original demolished homestead was built for Robert and Emily Barton, the setting for the marriage in 1863 of their daughter Rose Isabella Barton and Andrew Bogle Paterson.
The son they had the following year, Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson, who went on to write some of our best-loved ballads like Waltzing Matilda, The Man From Snowy River and Clancy Of The Overflow.
Together with the adjacent Boree Cabonne property, Nyrang was regarded at the time as one of the best sheep stations in the colony.
It changed hands in 1865 with John Smith of Gamboola, Molong, buying 17,000 acres (6,880 hectares) of the original 66,560-acre holding.
His eldest son controlled it until 1900 when 6000 acres of Boree Nyrang was sold to Sir Norman Kater MLC, who built the present Nyrang homestead in 1904.
The Katers sold in 1918 to George Rutherford, the son of James Rutherford, who expanded the Cobb Co stagecoach company throughout Australia.