In an unmarked corner of the millionaire philanthropist James Fairfax’s sprawling southern highlands estate, Retford Park, sits a small cemetery.
Tiny headstones have names carved on to them: there’s Benedict Fairfax who died in 1974; Cordelia Fairfax and Juliet Fairfax, who both died in 1979. More recent additions to the family graveyard include Max and Paloma, Juno and Apollo.
This is the final resting place, of course, for Fairfax’s beloved dogs. Not everyone is in the know, however. At the dog cemetery, my guide confides that more than one visitor has needed reassurance. Some were shocked that “these children died so young,” she says. “And I had to say, no, not children! Dogs!”
Earlier this year, Fairfax bestowed Retford Park to the National Trust of Australia’s New South Wales division, the single largest gift in its 70-year history. The sunny spring morning on which I visit is one of the few this year when the gardens have been opened to the public.
There will be another opportunity to see them this weekend during the Highway 31 Heritage Run, organised by the National Trust and Classic Yass motoring festival. History fanatics will have the chance to wander around five heritage properties along the Old Hume Highway 31, starting at Retford Park and culminating at Banjo Paterson Park for the Classic Yass vintage car rally.
Retford Park gardens (the house, for now, remains closed to the public) is the jewel in the crown with its sculptural, perfectly round hedges, crepe-like pink tree peonies, lush orchard and noble canine statues that guard the front door. Other properties on the Heritage Run include Harper’s Mansion in Berrima, Riversdale in Goulburn and Cooma Cottage in Yass.
Heritage properties are not always so valued in Australia. Fines for breach of planning provisions are often so low that rapacious developers have factored them into their costs; penalties are dwarfed by profits made from creating new apartment blocks or dividing up the land.
Just last month, developers illegally demolished the 1857 Corkman Irish Pub in Melbourne, one of Carlton’s oldest buildings. In 2014, workers wreaked such havoc on the historic features of Melbourne’s early 20th century Palace theatre, while a heritage review was under way, that it was deemed no longer worth saving. It is now due to be demolished and will be replaced by a 12-storey hotel.
It is heartening, then, to see such care taken over Retford Park. The substantial 1887 Italianate residence sits like a resplendent apricot Christmas cake – one laced with crisp white frilly icing – on 33 hectares of English-style gardens in Bowral. (Not everyone was won over by the ornate structure: the late interior design king Leslie Walford once disparagingly compared the mansion’s honey tones to “a sort of cowpat colour”.)
James Oswald Fairfax, the great grandson of newspaper founder James Fairfax, bought Retford Park in 1964 for £15,000. Today it is worth an estimated $20m. In order to raise funds for the upkeep of the park after his death, 90 of the 120 hectares of the estate are currently being developed for residential use, with a large portion of the profits donated to the National Trust Heritage Foundation.
This weekend, the mansion’s doors will remain firmly shut (Fairfax still lives there). But visitors can still lounge by Guilford Bell’s stylish modernist Pool Pavilion, built in 1968, and gawk at Fairfax’s pet emus, who scamper up and down a long “emu run” attached to the house.
Native birds aside, the feel is very much English country garden, with many features, including the picturesque fountain path, framed by hedges that mimic giant smooth pebbles, created by the renowned British landscape architect John Codrington. Indeed, Retford Park was named after the village in Nottinghamshire where Anthony and Ann Hordern – whose son, Samuel Hordern, commissioned the mansion to be built – emigrated from in 1825.
Pretty benches sit under sprawling oaks (the emblem of Hordern’s retail business was an oak tree). Afternoon tea, including scones, is served out of the old stables. There’s a Knot Garden and the Green Room created by the Melbourne-based landscape designer David Wilkinson. In the latter, a green bronze sculpture, Euphoric Angels by Inge King, rests on a hedge plinth surrounded by expansive grass and bordered by bushes, the peachy villa peeking out from behind. It is a reflective space, designed for contemplation, both startling in the variation and tone of the colour green and simultaneously quiet and serene.
The Hordern family emblem featured the words “While I live, I’ll grow” under a large oak tree. It’s a fitting maxim for a garden that has developed into one of the best in Australia. Go see it. Just don’t get confused about the dog cemetery.
• Highway 31 Heritage Run is on 5 and 6 November
