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“No, no, this is not a woolshed,” Mum insists, shaking her head as we step inside Peppertree Farm’s three-bedroom, two-bathroom, open-plan farm-stay option. It is clearly labelled The Woolshed.
“It’s not,” she continues. “They’re smelly, with flies and no air-conditioning. At least the way I remember them.”
When I suggest that what she’s remembering dates back to her earliest visits to the Mudgee area as a young bride in the mid-1960s, she concedes that’s true.
Converted woolsheds have arguably become the benchmark of regional gentrification. Cleaned up and furnished with modular sofas and LED entertainment screens, these icons of the bush offer city folk authentic country downtime, with the comfort of a $2000 coffee machine.
Back in the day, Mum used to stay at Ruth and Frank Dunn’s livestock and cropping property, Olinda, in historic Rylstone, a 40-minute drive from Mudgee and just over three hours north-west of Sydney.
They both fell in love with the big skies and fertile tablelands of the NSW Central West, and I was introduced from an early age to the characterful towns that roll out beyond the Blue Mountains: Lithgow, Portland, Bathurst, Orange, Rylstone, Gulgong and of course, the district’s golden girl, Mudgee. I recall long, hot, fly-filled days at Olinda, trying desperately not to inhale too deeply the smell of shearer’s sweat, sheep dung and lanolin in the woolshed.
The Dunns are, sadly, now residents at the Rylstone cemetery, and the last time Mum and my late father visited the area was for one of the annual Mudgee Small Farm Field Days in the early 2000s.
But on hearing that Mudgee’s multimillion-dollar regional art gallery had now opened – not to mention some new eateries in town and rumours of a limited-edition thyme-infused honey set to debut at the Robertson Park food markets – I told Mum it was time to once again gun it up the Great Western Highway. She couldn’t pack her overnight bag fast enough.
We chat on the drive up about the increased competition Mudgee faces as other regions begin staking their future on tourism. Forget the old motor inns, these days “gate-to-plate” pub grub, cute alpaca farms and pony trail rides are used to tempt city dwellers. Not to mention rural shires paying well-known artists to paint their grain silos for the national Silo Art Trail and flying in astronomers to host night sky festivals. Oh, and, encouraging savvy farmers to transform rusty woolsheds into sleek five-star stays.
We’re about to discover that Mudgee is fiercely protective of its hard-won gold-medal podium position for “top rural town getaway” by leaning hard into “full gentrification quirk”, as Mum dubs it.
For years, visitors in the know have made a beeline for lunch or dinner at Pipeclay Pumphouse and Zin House, and you can now also get a taste of the latter at Althea by Zin, a great bakery and cafe in town giving the established Alby & Esthers a run for its money.
The old pubs remain steadfast on every other street corner, and there are boutiques aplenty run by the stylish locals. But on this trip, it’s the unexpected things – the innovative reimagining of an old horse stud, the clever repurposing of a corner of an unused paddock – that offer us the greatest surprise and delight.
At Gooree Park – once a thoroughbred racing operation owned by the late Filipino businessman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr, with a racetrack the size of Royal Randwick’s – we discover a thriving winery run by Cojuangco’s widow, who flies into Mudgee Airport from Manila a couple of times a year on her private jet.
We’re given a tour by Cojuangco’s great nephew, Rafael, and end up at the cellar door, located in what had been the lavish stable complex for the stud’s leading stallions. There’s also an orchard of 200 orange trees and a food truck, Mally’s Kitchen, serving delicious satay chicken skewers, fresh dim sum and pork buns alongside savoury meat pies.
After buying two bags of oranges (not quite what I was expecting to come away with from a horse stud turned vineyard), we drive onto Rosby, another fairytale property, and now with a lovely art gallery space squeezed in among the vines. Rosby is run by Kay and Gerald Norton-Knight, and I depart with one of Kay’s landscape etchings, Rolling Hills, found among the other artists displayed.
Old Wheels Grind, a pit stop for coffee and fresh doughnuts in a shady paddock on the edge of town, features timber picnic tables and a collection of old tractors, Land Rovers and other mechanical delights.
On the fourth and final day of our trip, on the drive back to Sydney, we stop at the 29 Nine 99 Yum Cha & Tea House run by chef and artist Na Lan in Rylstone. Mum leaves her glasses in the car and initially mistakes a pork-and-chive dumpling for a Country Women’s Association scone. As with the Peppertree woolshed (and as much as she still loves a CWA scone), she votes the dumplings a “great leap forward” for rural life.
Next, we pop into nearby De Beaurepaire Wines. The vineyard is situated in a cold-climate limestone valley that’s perfect for French-style wines and owner and patriarch Richard de Beaurepaire jokes that “Rylstone is Bowral 30 years ago”. Mum laughs, but she’s no longer so fussed about hunting down the past. She’s hooked on this new generation of hospitality. Especially when it’s delivered with the same old Central West heart and soul – plus a few annoying flies, of course.
The writer was a guest of Mudgee Region Tourism.
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