Tasmania
Enjoy being lord and lady of the manor at Australia’s very own Downton Abbey
STORY AMANDA DUCKER
IT may be hard to believe, but I didn’t know who soapie actor Kate Ritchie was until I saw her wedding photos taken at Quamby Estate in Tasmania’s beautiful Meander Valley in 2010.
While the pictures didn’t inspire much curiosity in me about the ex- Home and Away star, who married Stuart Webb in the glorious, manicured grounds, the widely published images left me keen to visit the Hagley property.
It’s taken me six years to get there, during which time the circa 1828 Anglo Indianstyle homestead has changed hands and been restored, but it’s been worth the wait.
Like Ritchie I find myself “deliriously happy” (or at least decidedly so). While Ritchie found her bliss gazing into the eyes of her rugby league-star beau at the foot of an ancient hornbeam tree as they exchanged vows, I find mine in black silk on the veranda overlooking the same tree.
With a glass of Moorilla bubbles in hand, I lose myself in the comforting sounds of a pastoral idyll before dusk: lowing cattle, birds fussing as they roost and the pulsating chirp of crickets.
It all takes place beneath the day’s last golden rays flickering through hawthorn hedges, elms and poplars.
In a glass pavilion beyond the homestead, a wedding reception for 100 guests is under way, the 58th this season, estimates executive chef Scott Radin.
He talks us through the wine-matched, huntergatherer menu as we sit in private luxury at a table for two in the green room, a plush parlour decorated with olive green walls, gilded mirrors, an enormous pale Persian rug and ornate curtains.
Tasmanian produce is abundant. We start with handmade saffron gnocchi with silky Huon Valley mushrooms and West Haven goat cheese and cress, accompanied by a Pipers Brook riesling.
Our main course is chargrilled Mt Roland scotch fillet sauced with a traditional French merlot gastrique, served with roasted new potatoes and asparagus from Sassafras. It’s the most delicious steak we’ve ever eaten and we drink to that with a small glass of Holm Oak cabernet merlot.
For dessert, there’s delectable handmade ice- cream with such flavours as Persian fairy floss, pistachio and Sheffield berries, and white chocolate, raspberry and vanilla bean, which we enjoy with a Josef Chromy botrytis dessert wine.
By this time, I’m horizontal on the silken chaise longue and wondering how I’ll make it the short distance from here to our rose garden courtyard suite, one of 10 guest rooms in the two-storey manor.
Eventually I do, and even have a bath overlooking the nine-hole golf course before flaking out in heavenly comfort on the kingsize fourposter bed.
In the morning, estate manager Robyn McInerney shows us an old dungeon, where misbehaving convicts may or may not have been locked from time to time.
There’s debate over that one, but Quamby Estate would never have been built without convict labour. About 800 convicts are estimated to have worked on the original 12,000 acre estate, which became especially well-known a generation later as the home of Sir Richard Dry, who became Tasmania’s first homegrown premier in 1866.
Today the 60ha estate is owned by Virgin Australia co- founders Brett Godfrey and Rob Sherrard, a high-end tourism duo who operate several tourism enterprises in the state, including the Cradle Mountain Huts and Bay of Fires Lodge walking tours.
We are served a cooked breakfast in the main dining room, whose historic ballroom splendour lives on with splashes of silver and an enormous chandelier. A clutch of floral bathrobe-clad bridesmaids, ensconced for yet another wedding, is already eating at a long table.
“If I get married, I’m going to have to have 10 bridesmaids or one,” announces one of them, but I can’t tell which because massive antique gilded mirrors are doubling their ranks in my bleary eyes.
As they move onto the day’s plans for eyelashes, we move on for a bike ride over the property. Our slight concern is we will be clocked by errant golf balls during the weekend competition now in full swing.
Back at the homestead, collecting our gourmet picnic lunch before checking out, I notice one of last week’s guests has written “Downton Abbey” in the visitors’ book. It turns out estate manager Robyn and her butler husband used to work at Highclere Castle in the UK, where the hit period drama was filmed.
Conversation turns to the idea of service and why Australians are so often reluctant to be served, leaping up to make their own tea or insisting on lugging their own suitcases. Call me unAustralian, but I’ve loved every minute being spoilt rotten at Quamby Estate.