Hunter Homestead

The Hunter Homestead is a sandstone and timber farmhouse in the Hunter Valley of NSW, set into open paddocks with the surrounding ranges visible in the middle distance. The house is single-storey, with a steep iron roof and chimneys at each end. Sandstone forms the lower wall courses; timber weatherboard rises above. A central front door is flanked by sash windows. The verandah out the front extends across the full width of the house, supported on dressed-stone columns. The garden has gone over to dry grass and self-seeded native shrubs. A single eucalypt grows directly in front of the steps.

The Hunter Valley was settled for grazing and cropping from the early nineteenth century, with the colony's first wine grapes planted in the region in the 1820s. Sandstone homesteads of this kind were typical of the larger established properties that ran cattle, horses, and dairy. As the region's economy shifted toward wine, coal mining, and small-acre lifestyle holdings in the late twentieth century, working homesteads like this one were progressively replaced by purpose-built modern houses or sold off and left vacant. The Hunter Homestead in this photograph is no longer occupied. The family that built it has been gone from the property for at least two generations.