Restoration Australia S7E04,
Restoration Australia - Season 7 Episode 4,
Restoration Australia Season 7 Episode 4 ,
Restoration Australia ,
#RestorationAustralia
Restoration Australia - Season 7 Episode 4,
Restoration Australia Season 7 Episode 4 ,
Restoration Australia ,
#RestorationAustralia
Category
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FunTranscript
00:00What happens to an enormous country home when the sprawling farming family that
00:10first occupied it is long gone and over time it's been left alone and
00:14unattended? Much loved by its local community but without an attentive owner
00:19with plenty of time and money to keep up the maintenance, that once grand house is
00:24soon on a slide that gets steep and dramatic pretty quickly. So without
00:30scaring up another large rich family to take it on, is there another left of
00:34field way to save this local landmark? Well perhaps there is.
00:42I'm Anthony Burke, a professor of architecture, passionate about buildings
00:48of the past. This is incredibly impressive. And what they can tell us
00:52about better ways to live in the future. This is very confronting. It's a ruin.
00:57Join me as I travel the country meeting homeowners embarking on the
01:01challenge of a lifetime. Restoring homes from the 1800s to the
01:06swinging 60s. Looking to balance our rich cultural
01:11heritage with life in modern Australia.
01:26It can get very chilly out here around Yass in New South Wales where the
01:32southern tablelands begin to drift into the southwest slopes. It's a good thing
01:38so many local residents have a toasty warm coat of the world's finest wool.
01:43Highly prized merino wool that will make its way to some of the most elite
01:49fashion houses in Europe. A journey also undertaken by this stylish gentleman.
01:56I modeled across photographic skills, some TV commercials and then the runway
02:03or catwalk modeling that you call. So that's the big fashion shows that they
02:08hold in Paris and Milan. I've walked the Giorgio Armani's runway, Jean-Paul Gaultier.
02:14I did his fashion show which was incredible and some underwear shoots as well.
02:22Nowadays Edward is no longer a globetrotting professional show pony.
02:27He's left the catwalk for dressage and he loves his horses.
02:34One of my passions is equestrian sport, dressage, cross-country and show jumping.
02:39We're very lucky to have horses and to be able to spend the time with them and
02:44they're just they're fascinating animals to me. Their generosity and what they
02:48offer and give is amazing.
02:53Edward's partner Leigh is an enthusiastic and supportive spectator.
02:58I'm not quite the groom that he would like me to be. I'm there, I do support him.
03:04I hand him things that he tells me he needs but you know my job is cleaning up
03:09after them. I'm less of a groom and more of a general general hand I think.
03:15Looking good Leigh. Leigh's a commercial property consultant with an international story of
03:20his own. Growing up alongside one of the most defining sounds of the 60s and 70s.
03:26My uncle founded the Moody Blues back in the 60s in the Midlands of England and
03:31my dad became his manager. So to a degree both of us have lived around the world
03:37in formative times and here we are in Yassna for the next thing.
03:43So what was it that brought an international model and a bloke
03:48connected to rock and roll royalty so far off their beaten tracks to Yass?
03:54What else? A stately country manor. Very rock and roll.
04:00It felt unloved but gee the house just sings to you when you're there and I
04:05fell in love with it. I was daunted by the size of it. You know like most people
04:08you get lost when you first go in it. Blackburn is a three-story Georgian
04:13homestead on almost 40 hectares northwest of Yass. There are 26 rooms.
04:2026! 10 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms and 5 reception rooms to name more than a few
04:27of them. It has so many fireplaces, 15, that its original owner homed a worker
04:33on site to maintain and operate all of them. I found the property online
04:39originally and thought wow this looks too good to be true. A dream really and I
04:48said well why don't you go down you know have a look. It was the end of the drought
04:52here. It was completely desiccated and overgrazed. Just threadbare paddocks. The
04:58skies were yellow brown and I drove down the driveway with the agent and there
05:04were blackbirds and birdsong, wrens. I said to Edward, it's like Tara but after the
05:09war. Tara, the mansion star of the classic Gone with the Wind. And while
05:16plenty were rolling up to view this epic house, awestruck by its scale and
05:20impressed by its features, when push came to bid on auction day, no one seemed
05:26prepared to take on a 26 room house in urgent need of restoration. I'd not
05:33actually physically been inside the house. I sat in the car, didn't even go
05:38inside for the auction and then just waited to see what was going to happen.
05:43The house passed in but as a registered bidder, Lee retained the right to
05:48negotiate. Once of course, Edward had taken a look. Edward walked in, he was
05:53given what 10, 15 minutes? Lee came up to the car and said it passed in, come in
05:59have a look. So I went in and yeah. But you had no doubts? He looked at it, wanted to go
06:05for it. That's what's amazing. It found us and both of us in our both
06:10first 10 minutes of experience of this house had a sense of home. It feels like
06:14home. It's fantastic. Edward and Lee finally secured Blackburn for 1.4
06:21million dollars. They'd restored properties before, including another
06:26rural project. But what on earth were these two going to do with this enormous
06:31place rattling around its dozens of rooms and corridors? And there lies
06:36another important layer to their plans. An adaptive reuse of Blackburn that
06:41will give it a sustainable purpose into the future and enable them to maintain
06:45their home. A place like this needs annual maintenance and those costs are
06:52high. So the only way it will work for us is for it to have a business
06:56supporting it and that's going to be events and accommodation and that will
06:59keep this place the way we want it to look long-term.
07:05Few things ensure our building's longevity quite like giving it a job, a
07:10functioning, sustaining purpose. If two blokes are going to buy a cavernous
07:16country mansion as their home, then vast areas of it are just not going to get
07:20used. And if rooms get overlooked, maintenance gets missed and the next
07:25thing you know, stuff starts falling into disrepair. But if Lee and Edward can put
07:31Blackburn to work, then not only will more people get to enjoy it, but upkeep
07:36necessarily gets maintained and the money coming in can help pay for it all.
07:40But they're going to have to be careful, subtle and respectful. The Yass locals
07:46have a lot of history and a lot of heart invested in Blackburn.
07:54I think people are actually genuinely wanting to see it repaired. There are
07:59people here who are third, fourth generation and their parents, their
08:02grandparents may have worked here or had something to do with the people who were
08:05here. So people have those memories and they're very supportive more than
08:10anything. Genuinely lovely people who want you to be part of the community and
08:15and are encouraging of what we're doing.
08:21Hello, Anthony.
08:22Hi Lee, how are you?
08:23Very well, thank you.
08:24Welcome.
08:24Lovely to meet you both. And this is extraordinary. Look how massive this
08:29place is and sitting in this gorgeous landscape.
08:32And this is the back of the house.
08:33Oh, and this is the back of the house.
08:34We've got more to show you at the front.
08:35Show me the front of the house. I can see you've already been busy, got the
08:39veranda going.
08:40We have, this was the derelict part.
08:41In the two years they've had the place, Lee and Edward have tinkered here and
08:45there and addressed at least one major concern.
08:48Because it was derelict, we had to repair it first.
08:50Yeah, so new posts and beams, new gutters.
08:53Yeah, yeah.
08:54But everything else is in great structural order, Anthony.
08:57Yeah.
08:58The secret to Blackburn Sound's structural order has a lot to do with the
09:02bones beneath these bricks. It has a steel frame. That's a really novel idea
09:08for late 19th century rural Australia.
09:11I love the idea that that's all engineered and steel in there, because I
09:14would never have guessed that.
09:15Yeah, it's modern and it's not. The pipe clay here generated those bricks.
09:20So there's many, there's many things that are natural to the fabric and also
09:24things which were quite modern and industrial.
09:26So you combine those things into what was meant to be an Italianate boom time
09:29house.
09:30Italianate boom time.
09:31There you go.
09:31That puts us then right in the end of the 1890s.
09:35So we've just come out of a depression and we're going into federation.
09:39Yeah.
09:39And there's a lot of, you know, prosperity and forward thinking going on
09:43in Australia, especially rural Australia. So this is a product of that, I guess.
09:48So with this dramatic giant still robustly upright and fundamentally sound
09:52with its resolute steel superstructure, the big challenge for Lee and Edward is
09:57conquering the scale of the place and getting it to work as a home, a function
10:01centre and weekend getaway for guests.
10:05This is the parlour or reception hall.
10:08There's just so much of it.
10:11Everything in here is big, isn't it?
10:13Absolutely.
10:14Look at those scooting boards.
10:15What are they, like 16 inches?
10:16They are too.
10:1716 foot ceilings.
10:19Actually, with the scale of those windows, one thing I would have expected a bit
10:23more light.
10:24It's a little dark in here.
10:25That's what we thought.
10:26It was sort of almost oppressive and we wanted to bring the light and showcase
10:32the grand scale of the room.
10:33Yeah.
10:33We want this to be the heart of the home again, but it doesn't have to, every
10:36room doesn't have to be used.
10:37And this one particularly is dynamic.
10:39It should be dynamic because the staircase is dynamic.
10:41Yeah.
10:43The staircase looks as if it's been sprung from MC Escher's catalogue of optical
10:48illusions, an impossible object seemingly unfolding onto itself as it heads for the
10:54clouds.
10:55I think Escher-esque is the appropriate phrase, is the technical term.
11:00You get the feeling that once you're on this thing, you may never get off.
11:05This is where you start to see how the staircase is put together.
11:08So these steel tires connect up to the steel beams that are around it.
11:12It was described as cantilevered, but I don't think it is.
11:15More suspended.
11:16I think so.
11:16Yeah.
11:16This would suggest that we've got the steel superstructure around here and then
11:21the staircase elements framing this void, those beams are suspended from these rods
11:26here.
11:27Pretty ingenious.
11:29This remarkable staircase goes on and on and on.
11:33And so do the bedrooms.
11:35Remember, there are 10 of them.
11:36With all these bedrooms going on, can you show me one?
11:38Absolutely.
11:39Let's go.
11:40Pick one?
11:40Choose one.
11:41That one?
11:41Yep.
11:43Lee and Edward have to fashion them into a functional set of attractive private
11:47guest rooms in their ambitious, adaptive reuse of Blackburn.
11:52What's the strategy around the rooms?
11:55Just beautiful comfort and, yeah, to agree, luxe, to agree, but simple.
12:01What you don't need is as important as what you do include.
12:04High ceilings, lots of great volume and space and that kind of sense of scale,
12:10you know, without complicating things.
12:11And then I guess the view from each room, different again, and almost like, you
12:16know, little picture frames to the outside.
12:20Yeah.
12:20And yeah, that beautiful landscape.
12:22Gorgeous, picturesque landscape outside every window.
12:24Mm-hmm.
12:27Just getting around this house is an epic adventure and restoring it
12:31will be an absolute odyssey.
12:33Ground up, Lee and Edward have to conquer a big drainage problem under the house,
12:38ditch the redundant utilities and bring 21st century plumbing and power throughout.
12:44On the ground floor, two old bathrooms will be updated and an old storeroom will
12:48become another bathroom for guests.
12:51Edward and Lee will create their own retreat in the old servant's quarters for
12:55use when the house is full of weekend guests.
12:59The kitchen will be replaced and an old service area will become a butler's
13:02pantry and recreation room.
13:06Upstairs, yet more bathrooms and a couple of sitting rooms will be converted to
13:12bedrooms.
13:13Further up that grand staircase, there'll be what Edward and Lee are billing as a
13:18bridal suite, which will include another bedroom and a bathroom.
13:22Some of the open fireplaces will convert to gas, so no need to employ a full-time
13:27attendant. In the end, the final bedroom tally will be 11 because what this
13:33rambling old mansion needs is yet another bedroom.
13:37I'm going to go first.
13:39You go first.
13:40Climb the mountain.
13:41If after clambering endless stairs and counting countless bedrooms, you've still
13:48got the puff, it just keeps going.
13:50It does.
13:52There's a breathtaking surprise at the top of it all.
13:58This is just, actually, this is sublime.
14:01This is what it means to live in the country.
14:03Look at this gorgeous piece of Australia.
14:05Lee and Edward's farmlet is the original homestead block of a sheep farm that once
14:10ranged for 10,000 hectares, 25,000 acres on the old scale.
14:16Great thing in the country, though, you always own more than you own.
14:19The views are fantastic.
14:25So tell me, how long do you think you're going to be working on this?
14:29Well, it's two years down, but I think it's another year.
14:33Another year?
14:33Another year.
14:34OK, what are the bits that are keeping you up at night?
14:36Where are your concerns?
14:38You can't plan this as a typical project.
14:42It's quite difficult to schedule certain things and trades at times.
14:46You've got to sort of zig and zag and that can be quite stressful.
14:53Let me ask you a question about budget.
14:55How much are you intending to spend?
14:57So we bought this two years ago for 1.4 and almost the same amount, 1.3, on the
15:03refurbishment and infrastructure.
15:07OK, so where does that leave us at 2.7, more or less?
15:10Approximately there.
15:11Overall?
15:12Purchase and restoration.
15:13Purchase and restoration.
15:14So how do you feel about the idea of sharing your house with all of those
15:17guests who come on the weekends?
15:20It's not going to be a full time enterprise.
15:22It's not primary.
15:25We are living here and those things are ancillary and around us living here.
15:30But ultimately, this house needs to have periodically people in here that are
15:35enjoying in the spaces.
15:36When a property like this has lost its land, then it has to find another way of
15:40earning its way and maintaining it and polishing it.
15:44Good example of that, it lost its land and it spent 40 years deteriorating before us.
15:48It's the people that make the place, make it home as well.
15:54Lee and Edward have a strong vision for this place.
15:58They're experienced renovators, so taking on a project of this scale really isn't
16:02the issue here.
16:04What's at stake for them is that they've fallen in love with this place, the
16:08building, its history, this glorious landscape and all it has to offer.
16:15I just hope that amongst all that enormity, they can make just a little bit of
16:19space for themselves to have a home too.
16:23Out in the bush, the elements can be your best friend and your worst enemy.
16:31Not a good look.
16:33And right now, Lee is shin deep in trouble.
16:38So we've had a lot of rain.
16:40This is stormwater.
16:42Days of rain have flooded the deepest, darkest parts of the house.
16:46It's been raining for days and days and days and days and days and days and days.
16:50Flooded the deepest, darkest recesses of the house, an enormous subterranean
16:56space.
16:57This is about a footprint, about 350, nearly 400 square metres and it's 300
17:03mil and that's stormwater.
17:06So what I've got here is a vacuum pump.
17:08It sucks out very rapidly, which is great for that amount of water.
17:12So I'm about to get under and basically vacuum nearly 400 square metres of house.
17:19Draining this dark and murky Blackburn billabong is a time consuming pain.
17:24The subfloor is a maze of spaces, so it's not easy weaving an industrial hosepipe
17:29through the labyrinth.
17:31It's really ponded in this north eastern corner and it looks like I can't move away
17:37from here because each time I suck it and stop, it comes back again.
17:42A specialist hydraulic engineer has investigated and hatched a plan to prevent
17:47a plan to properly drain and disperse rain from the roof.
17:51But labour shortages and, ironically, persistent rain have seriously hampered the
17:56installation. It's been probably the wettest two years, I think, that Yass has had in
18:01a long time, a living memory for most people.
18:03The dam pipes are overflowing because they're not going anywhere.
18:07And if we get more rain again and we don't fix these things, I don't want to be
18:12pumping out under the house again.
18:13So we've done it twice so far.
18:16Blackburn's soggy underbelly is a problem for the rest of the house.
18:20A lot of the time and labour intensive rendering in some of the rooms above has been
18:25spoiled by creeping moisture.
18:28This room was repaired, ready for painting.
18:30So this was render repaired, skirtings were on.
18:35So when you find the problem, skirtings off, we pull off the render, which was repaired.
18:41You damper, of course, and once that's done, you have to go back, put the render on.
18:48Then you have to put a plaster finish.
18:50Then you have to sand it.
18:51Then you put the skirtings back on.
18:53That process is all going backwards to go forwards because you didn't need to do it if
18:57you had what you've designed in place.
19:00Another day, another downpour, and doubtless, it's all pooling again under the house.
19:07That new drainage system can't come quick enough.
19:11In the meantime, the restoration team is cracking on with work that can be done in these
19:16trying conditions.
19:19It's likely exposure and neglect put Blackburn's big problem on the table.
19:25It's likely exposure and neglect put Blackburn's big, proud veranda on a perilous lean and
19:32created this one really major structural demand in the work schedule.
19:37The boys have already rebuilt it with pest and rot resistant cypress, and now they're
19:42repairing the undercroft, trying to use as much salvaged timber as they can.
19:47We've had to pick out the worst parts of all of it.
19:52The widths of the boards are different.
19:54The older boards a little bit bigger than the new boards, so it takes a lot longer.
20:00Site foreman Jake is leading a team of five, and he's loving the challenges and the original
20:06workmanship.
20:09I come from a family of builders.
20:11My dad's a builder.
20:11My grandfather was a builder.
20:13I really appreciate the building.
20:15You know, it was built in the 19th century, and you just appreciate how much extra effort
20:20would have had to be put in back in those days.
20:24I can't wait to wear it inside kitchen.
20:33Bit of an obstacle course.
20:39As Lee and Edward have been inching this monumental project through pretty tight heritage caveats
20:45and doing what they can over the past two years, they've been living on site.
20:50Beetroot looks like I've killed it.
20:53Prepping their meals in a jerry-built external kitchen.
20:57So I have to keep things simple.
20:59We wash up here, cook here, prepare over there.
21:05And eating, working, planning, organising and sleeping in a couple of Spartan rooms
21:10in this cavernous mansion.
21:12It is ironic, you know, you live in a 10-bedroom mansion, but the reality is, you know, your
21:19hearing across these two rooms, you're definitely getting sick of it.
21:24While they wait for the house to be plumbed with running water and comfort of comforts,
21:28internal toilets and modern bathrooms, they're getting a taste of how the original occupants
21:33of the house might have lived.
21:38Well, it was a little more crowded back then at the end of the 19th century.
21:42Scotsman George Weir's extended family filled its many corners.
21:47Weir was a highly successful engineer in his home country, building and operating a
21:51big enterprise with his brother in Glasgow.
21:54But in midlife, he gathered his clan, including an asthmatic son, and set off for where the
21:59air and sunshine was going to be kinder, to the other side of the world.
22:05And in a stunning career flip, the engineer turned frontier sheep farmer, at one time
22:10amassed around 60,000 acres in the Yass area.
22:14Blackburn, named for the Scottish town where George was born, was completed with its cleverly
22:19engineered steel skeleton in 1895.
22:23Dave, this is just magic, this country out here.
22:26And you've been here and connected to it, you know, deeply and for a long time.
22:30Tell me a little bit about it.
22:31Well, no, you're right. It is magic country, Anthony.
22:34And our grandfather, in conjunction with his father, bought it in 1922 from George Weir,
22:40going to establish the property in probably 1890, we think.
22:43Yes.
22:43And it was all about the sheep, right?
22:45Absolutely.
22:45That was where the wealth was and the money was.
22:47Yep.
22:49David spent his early childhood in the Blackburn mansion.
22:53But eventually, its sprawling farm was carved up into smaller ones.
22:57He now lives and grows wool on a 700 or so hectare parcel of it, right next door to
23:03Leon Edwards' much smaller homestead block.
23:06And David still fires up this magnificent old beast at the business end of the wool season.
23:12It's a shearing shed, built around the same time as Blackburn.
23:16Its continued, fully operational existence is a testimony to George Weir's engineering prowess.
23:23The timber in here is all cypress, but everything is held together by nuts and bolts.
23:29There are no screws holding all the joists or anything like that.
23:32Look at this.
23:35Dave, for me, I feel like a real city kid at the moment,
23:38because this is like an Australian sort of fantasy in a way.
23:41You know, a beautiful old working wool shed.
23:44They're beautifully designed old things.
23:46They're magical things.
23:47Timber, old timber, and beautiful old timber too.
23:49And the engineering accomplishment of that is quite unbelievable, to have actually done what he did.
23:54Back in Weir's day, before electricity made its way out here,
23:58a big old steam engine drove the flywheels, whirring over the shears and driving the clip.
24:04And it's noisy.
24:05It's nothing noisy, louder than a wool shed, flat out.
24:08There's nothing quieter either.
24:10When everything's finished, it's just deathly quiet.
24:13Ten bays, ten shearers going hell for leather.
24:17A thousand sheep a day.
24:19It's a scene that played throughout this region and beyond,
24:22as Australia built an early economic foundation on wool.
24:27So it'd be a damn tough operation.
24:29Yeah, damn tough.
24:30And it would have been an incredibly steep learning curve for someone like George Weir,
24:34an engineer from Scotland, comes and lands here and then decides to take up sheep farming.
24:39It'd be enormous.
24:40I don't know how you could have done that.
24:42I mean, it would have been an amazing place.
24:44So that sort of speaks to both an entrepreneurial spirit and also a kind of a heartiness.
24:49You know, like a real sort of like, no, I'm going to do this.
24:52Dig in, do it.
24:53Yeah.
24:55David's subdivided parcel of the old Blackburn farm is still a viable wool growing operation,
25:01thanks to advances in technology and animal husbandry,
25:04and he manages to farm a comfortable living.
25:07Subsistence farming just isn't feasible on Lee and Edward's much smaller pocket of the old Weir land,
25:14and David supports their efforts to find a new way to keep Blackburn functioning.
25:19What they're doing is they're maintaining integrity.
25:21Yeah.
25:22And the integrity that is there, the bones, the structure and everything else is there.
25:25They haven't changed that at all.
25:26Woody couldn't.
25:27No.
25:28No.
25:29So they're doing a really great job.
25:30They absolutely love it.
25:31They're throwing everything they have at it.
25:32Absolutely.
25:33Yeah.
25:34And they really do it.
25:35They really do it.
25:36I'll tell you what, they're very lucky to have you as a neighbour just across the road.
25:38Oh, it's a reciprocate.
25:39We're damn lucky to get this.
25:40We're single blokes.
25:48You might expect a house built in the Italianate boom time style to hold a few more showy embellishments,
25:55but George Weir was a devout Presbyterian, and the relatively stark presentation outside
26:00and inside Blackburn reflected his modest, no-nonsense view of the world.
26:06The last one that I took down had these massive nails.
26:11But there are some curiosities.
26:14It's solid.
26:16These plaster corbels dress many of the arches inside the hallways of the house.
26:26There are the nails.
26:27They're now in poor condition, and plasterer Adam is removing them so they can be repaired and replicated.
26:33Jeez.
26:34You can feel how solid that is.
26:36That's just all plaster.
26:38None of the others had nails?
26:39No.
26:40Oh, they all had nails.
26:41Yeah, but not like that.
26:42No, nothing like that.
26:43Not in the fingers?
26:44No, no, no.
26:45Ed would be able to use that for a burby trap out in the garden.
26:47I know he will.
26:56Hello, Carl.
26:57Edward.
26:58Hi, Edward.
26:59Pleased to meet you.
27:00Spoken to you enough.
27:01Here's the corbel.
27:02Beautiful.
27:03Oh, God, that'll come up.
27:05That will be beautiful.
27:07We're getting back to what he was.
27:09Your work, your magic.
27:10Yeah.
27:11Edward's found a craftsman in the area who's up for what will be a very delicate job.
27:17We're going to strip it right back to the original undercoat.
27:21Then we'll make a mould.
27:23Bring out the detail.
27:24Bring up all the detail.
27:26This has got years and years and years of gunk on it, of paint on it.
27:31Any real major dramas will fix.
27:33Yep.
27:34Take a mould and cast you 12 new ones, but exactly the same as the original would have looked.
27:41That detail.
27:42Yeah, the detail.
27:43Without that thick paint.
27:45Yeah, exactly.
27:46Yeah.
27:47Oh, well, can't wait, Carl.
27:48Neither can I.
27:54What a fabulous thing.
27:56I know they're only small, but to actually bring them back to life, to bring them back to see what they were.
28:03They're not just plaster glunked all over with paint.
28:07You've brought them back.
28:08You've captured what the original sculptor made and how they were made.
28:13And it's a great honour to be able to do that and to be asked to do it.
28:18It's an even greater honour.
28:25It's about a year since we joined the Blackburn makeover,
28:29so that means the boys are about three years into their project
28:33to turn the mansion into a home and function centre.
28:37G'day, Lee.
28:38Anthony, how are you?
28:39I'm good.
28:40Always something to do around here, eh?
28:42Welcome back, I know.
28:44Good to see you.
28:45Good to see you.
28:46My goodness, I keep getting reminded of how big this project is.
28:50But it seems that time-honoured and very frustrating restoration,
28:54Waltz of one step forward, two steps back, has been on a loop.
28:59Looks like the entire corner here has been taken out and you've fixed this already.
29:04Yes.
29:05Just as they thought the veranda work was done and dusted,
29:08those pesky water problems brought subsidence
29:11and they had to rip this corner up and start again.
29:14So we're going to rebuild this wall all the way through.
29:17So a little step backwards.
29:18A little step backwards, but it's doing it properly.
29:21And they discovered a family of micro-bats at home in a veranda void.
29:27Wildlife rules meant they had to wait for them to leave of their own accord.
29:32You can't relocate them.
29:34They've got to find their own way out.
29:36So by leaving it open and some daylight,
29:39one by one they left, but one hung around.
29:42Well, this is the country.
29:44It is the country, but that's gone.
29:46So when the builders are back, we can now finish it.
29:49In the grand scheme of the grand makeover of this grand house,
29:54there's small, unexpected setbacks, but they add up.
29:58Inside, at least, you can see things are advancing in these refreshed spaces
30:03fed by this marvel of late 19th century engineering, the suspended staircase.
30:08There she is.
30:09This is the most beautiful part of your home.
30:12I know.
30:13I find this thing fascinating.
30:15It's like you've turned structure upside down.
30:17Normally you'd build from the base up.
30:18Yeah, of course.
30:19So there's sort of a structural inversion going on here.
30:22And this is happening right at the moment where cast iron
30:26is being replaced by mild steel in architecture.
30:29So think about Chicago and the high-rise story.
30:32That's happening in the late 1880s.
30:34So there's a whole kind of language of building out of steel-framed
30:38or metal-framed buildings.
30:40And this is bringing it into a domestic space.
30:43This is cast iron, and we're standing on steel beams,
30:46like this one right here, which are taking all of this load.
30:50And to see all that happening in a house is quite remarkable.
30:54And this is all the same time this is happening in industry as well.
30:57And they would have known about that.
30:59Well, they were.
31:00So George and his family and his son-in-law were all engineers
31:04and obviously from Glasgow.
31:06So they would have that whole picture very much front of mind
31:09and be bringing all that kind of engineering intelligence
31:12into this moment.
31:13And you get, basically, this is what innovation looks like in 1895.
31:23As Lee and Edward press on with a conversion of Blackburn
31:26into what they hope is a practical, functional hybrid,
31:30a private home and weekend guest house,
31:33I'm keen to discover how, or even if, that can comfortably work.
31:40And two and a half hours north of Yass,
31:43outside Orange in central New South Wales,
31:46we find Rosedale Farm.
31:55Hello.
31:57Michael, how are you?
31:58Good. Thank you for coming. Nice to meet you.
32:00What a pleasure to meet you too.
32:02And what a beautiful property you have here.
32:05Thank you very much.
32:07Rosedale is an 1877 farmhouse
32:10and separate servants' quarters
32:12adaptively reinterpreted into a luxe country home
32:16and guest accommodation.
32:18It was a far bigger project than we thought it was going to be.
32:21Michael and interior designer partner Steve
32:24thought their project would take six months.
32:27It took six years.
32:29We were living in a naive, beautiful world
32:32giving it a lick of paints and a new bathroom and a new kitchen
32:35where it actually needed a lot more than that.
32:38OK.
32:39Out front, that meant transforming a swamp into an elegant pond,
32:44laying in a grand, sweeping driveway
32:47and planting 36,000 plants and trees.
32:51What a beautiful dining room.
32:53There's an abundance of flora inside as well.
32:56This wallpaper that's all around us,
32:59it's quite literally 360 degrees.
33:02Once they were in, they were all in.
33:05The lesson for Edward and Lee is that getting it right
33:08might take more money than they might have thought
33:11and plenty of time and patience.
33:14The chandeliers took two years to find
33:16and so we didn't have any lights in here for a long period.
33:19You must have the patience of a saint
33:21to kind of let it just take all of that time.
33:24There's been plenty of arguments along the way, trust me.
33:28The downside is it costs a lot more money
33:31than we thought it was going to
33:33and took a lot longer than we thought of.
33:35Yeah.
33:36A year ago, you know, this month,
33:38we started renting out the guest apartments
33:41just to kind of offset a lot of the cost
33:43associated with running a big country house.
33:46Yeah, right.
33:47The maintenance of big old buildings like this is very expensive.
33:53So, farmstays, events,
33:56even ticketed tours of these remarkable gardens.
33:59Whatever it takes to make this home work and support itself
34:03without a sprawling agricultural operation to sustain it.
34:07I think one of those things that people just don't realise
34:10about properties, beautiful properties like this,
34:12is there's the physical house
34:14but then there's the entrepreneurial, almost, or business side
34:18that you have to wrap around to keep it alive, keep it going.
34:21And it's a fine line between opening your home
34:24but also it being private.
34:26And to spend some time together in front of an open fire is a blessing.
34:29Yes. So you feel OK about that?
34:31Absolutely, we do.
34:33It never really felt like it was ours.
34:36We almost felt like custodians of our property
34:39and so it's been nice to share it with other people.
34:42It's just too good to keep to yourself.
34:45Isn't it? Absolutely.
34:52Of course, when you think of the signature features of a country manor,
34:57the real drawcard, a warm, toasty fireplace, looms large.
35:03Only 12 more to go.
35:06And Blackburn has more than a dozen of them.
35:10It's good I'm a strong guy, though.
35:12HE CHUCKLES
35:14I picked the right career.
35:16Antique fireplace expert Steve is installing
35:19one of the two marble fireplaces salvaged
35:22from a couple of stately homes in Sydney and deftly restored.
35:26Lee went and actually saw them at the showroom in Sydney
35:30so this is the first time I've seen them myself
35:33and they're fantastic.
35:35Yeah, can't wait. They'll be a real feature.
35:38The bad news is this glorious marble piece isn't going to last.
35:43The bad news is this glorious marble piece isn't sitting plumb.
35:48See how we've got this big gap underneath the front of the marble leg?
35:53Yeah, it's bowing down a little bit, isn't it?
35:55Yeah, yeah, like I can put my finger underneath the front.
35:58Look, I can even show you with this red pencil
36:01that that's how much clearance it has.
36:04So I reckon if we cut that, it'll really make that gap come down
36:08and it'll look so much better.
36:10You've got to fit it to the crooked house, don't you?
36:12That's it, yeah, that's it, yeah.
36:15The mansion's mighty steel superstructure
36:18hasn't stopped the hearth from slipping a little
36:20and that means surgery on the valuable and very fragile marble surround.
36:26Have a look.
36:27That's heaps better.
36:28Have a look at that.
36:29OK.
36:30Alright, that's great, that's one done.
36:32Let's get another one done, Josh.
36:34OK, one, two, three.
36:37Lee and Edward have decided against running their fireplaces
36:41as George Weir did back in the day.
36:4315 fireplaces chugging wood smoke into the atmosphere
36:47is not a very 21st century notion.
36:50You ready?
36:52That's the way, beautiful.
36:54Selected fireplaces will be plumbed for natural gas.
36:58It's not ideal, but it's the most practical option for the time being
37:02and most will only be used for functions and when weekenders come to stay.
37:07They're sure to be marvelling at the beautiful detail in these pieces.
37:12The black trim that they have in the marble surround
37:16is actually slate, which was a lot cheaper than Belgian black marble,
37:21which is very rare and very, very expensive.
37:25It's almost like statutory marble, which is what David was made out of.
37:30So what they did, they got the slate and they polished it and polished it
37:34and it really, you can't tell much difference between that and the Belgian black.
37:41Great job, Steve.
37:43Josh?
37:45Yeah.
37:46Oh, beautiful.
37:47Love it.
38:01Quite often a lot of these older rooms are out of square,
38:05so we find centre first.
38:08Finally, some of Edward's eye-catching accessories are taking their place.
38:14Just a bit of modification.
38:16Fresh and striking pressed metal
38:19is replacing the old and deteriorated ceiling treatments.
38:24The hard grind of stripping and restoring
38:27the seemingly endless array of doors and windows is getting into gear.
38:32I don't think there's enough sandpaper in Australia
38:35to give this house up to that stage, but we're getting there.
38:43There it is.
38:46There it is.
38:52Carl's new corbels are springing from the mould.
38:55Absolutely fantastic.
38:57Yeah.
38:59Now, it's great when they come out like that.
39:02You nearly know what you're doing.
39:04That is fantastic.
39:06There's a little imperfection there, but that is in the original.
39:11It is not up to me to reinterpret what this should have been.
39:16We are interpreting what was original, not what I think was original.
39:22And if we can reproduce the original, then you're preserving history.
39:36So after that 24 years, we've got 1895 here.
39:41And like Carl, the boys find themselves enthralled with the past.
39:46They've been drawn deeper and deeper into the history of Blackburn.
39:50George, in the foundry, was making church bells...
39:54Really? ..and giving them away.
39:56For free? For free.
39:58For free. So a true Presbyterian.
40:01By the looks of it. Yeah.
40:04They're diving forensically into the origins of the house
40:07and the engineer who built it with bright and adventurous ideas.
40:11Made by an engineer with a steel frame on the tower
40:14and then at the same time, the austerity of the Presbyterians,
40:17the ceilings and the darkness and the stripped-back look.
40:20Well, you'd wonder what George would think
40:22of what we're doing through it today.
40:25Yeah, absolutely.
40:26They're learning more about his extended family.
40:29This is the family sitting out the front, three generations.
40:33He always stands out with that white beard, doesn't he?
40:36And the families and personalities who've occupied it since.
40:40It's a really good one, the house.
40:43All tell a story they're keen to absorb, preserve and add to.
40:48It's really interesting to find out the history of the homestead,
40:52the people behind it
40:54and its relationship with the town and the community.
40:57When you're looking at a house like this, you buy it for a reason.
41:01It's got life in it, it's got the length of history in it
41:04and finding out stories that make up why this house is here,
41:08that brings the human scale to it.
41:11Comprehending the history and rhythms of this house
41:14is as important as its hardware.
41:18And the life and times of Blackburn
41:20are about to spring into a new dimension.
41:23I've just had this aside for a number of years.
41:26My great...my grandfather was an amateur photographer,
41:31took these back in the 20s,
41:33going into the 30s and 40s and 50s.
41:35Neighbour David could just about convene a Blackburn film festival
41:39with this remarkable back catalogue of material.
41:42And he's planning a screening with Lee and Edward
41:45and a very special guest.
41:47I want to show my mother, who's 99 years old.
41:50I'd love Mum to see this.
41:51Our projector, the original projector's broken,
41:53so I've got a mate who's got one,
41:55which hopefully we might be able to get going
41:57and get these films through it to show Mum now,
41:59who's, as I said, she's 99 years old,
42:01so I'm sure she'll really love seeing the movies of her,
42:04her parents, her grandparents, and some of us too.
42:11Hello!
42:12Hello.
42:13It's lovely to see you after all this time.
42:16I know.
42:17It's lovely to see you.
42:18It's good to see you, David.
42:22How are you?
42:23Lovely to see you again.
42:25We've missed you terribly.
42:27Thank you for having us in.
42:29Can't wait to see the film.
42:30Home movies time.
42:31Can't wait.
42:32David's mum June is just weeks away from her 100th birthday.
42:38These rolling images of her growing up in Blackburn
42:41are a perfect early gift,
42:43and they bring the memories flooding back.
42:46It's me doing the Charleston, believe it or not.
42:49The Charleston?
42:50Yeah.
42:51Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
42:53Oh, that's fantastic, June.
42:56It was a big house all around.
42:58I must have fallen off a horse a dozen times.
43:01What a blessing to have a direct connection to Blackburn's early days,
43:06the fun and fascination of growing up in this enormous house.
43:11We loved it, loved home.
43:13We weren't excited about going out or anything.
43:16We just loved home.
43:20And the then sprawling farm's key role
43:23in Australia's foundational wool industry.
43:26Dad was going down to enlist.
43:28This was the second war.
43:30After a lot of examination, they turned him down.
43:33And Dad came out, got despondent,
43:36and then said to the bloke,
43:38why'd you turn me down?
43:40Well, he said, you grow sheep,
43:42and we're going to need sheep or wool for uniforms,
43:45and we're going to need a lot of it.
43:48You get back onto the place and you grow sheep.
43:51Back in the days of June's childhood,
43:54the house was pretty starkly decorated, drab even.
43:58Granny was a very bossy old lady.
44:01She chose all the furnishing, you know.
44:04She was all brown and yellow and gold and not pretty.
44:09Well, you couldn't really make a house like that pretty.
44:12Well, there's a challenge for Edward.
44:15Oh, that's fantastic. That's a wonderful film.
44:18Just wonderful.
44:19It's incredible.
44:20It's a happy time.
44:22Yeah, it's always felt happy to me.
44:24Yeah.
44:35As miles upon miles of beautifully restored
44:39and, in parts, recreated skirting boards go in...
44:42Eddie's quite a big job.
44:44But once it's all cut in like that and painted,
44:47it looks million dollars.
44:49And the painting team lays down Edward's unifying neutral tones.
44:54And the concreters extend and broaden the decks
44:57surrounding the house.
45:04I picked these up online.
45:06They're great, like, surveyor stand lamps.
45:10Like a miner on late shift, Edward's been hunting for gold,
45:14burning the midnight oil,
45:16acquiring the huge quantity of furnishings and decorations
45:19needed to fill the voids.
45:21He's amassed some, but needs much, much more.
45:25Well, that Venetian mirror looks amazing.
45:28I think... It's in Venetian.
45:30Wow.
45:31Edward's not out to make Blackburn pretty,
45:33just very stylish and inviting,
45:36and a place to be very proud of.
45:39We've got so many rooms that we have to fill
45:42and furnish in this house,
45:44and we just want everything in this looking, you know,
45:48that great look which will be country house style,
45:50but also what you call a mix with the more contemporary.
45:55The fun bit for me is actually filling the house,
45:58and I'm just really looking forward to that
46:01rather than, you know, stormwater drains and rewiring.
46:05That's my job.
46:06And, you know, I'd rather pull teeth than that, really.
46:15PIANO PLAYS
46:31Restoration, particularly at this scale,
46:34is never straightforward,
46:35and it's been a long series of promising advances
46:39and frustrating setbacks,
46:41but Lee and Edward have remained cool
46:43and committed to doing things properly, no shortcuts.
46:47Now it's time to unveil their major work,
46:50including Edward's carefully curated furnishings and decorations.
46:54But the question still remains.
46:57Can Blackburn work as their private sanctuary
47:00and as a weekend guest house and reception centre?
47:12MUSIC PLAYS
47:26Looking fantastic.
47:28Welcome back, Anthony. Morning, gentlemen.
47:30Hello, Anthony. Welcome. How are you? Good.
47:32Great to see you. Great to see you too.
47:34And congratulations, this is looking very proper.
47:38I'm thrown back to, like, when it was first built.
47:40I can imagine now what it would have been like
47:42when this sort of first emerged out of the ground.
47:44Oh, incredible. Yeah. And thank you for that.
47:46George Weir, thank you. Yeah, indeed.
47:48Ready for another 130 years. Indeed.
47:52I have to say, the terrace is looking magnificent.
47:54More proportionate, I think, this time.
47:56That's right.
47:57A little wedge of concrete we had before.
47:59A little bit more generous in nature, which is really great.
48:02I can already imagine people standing out here
48:04having a cocktail, sun setting.
48:06You know, things happening on the lawn. Yeah.
48:08Magnificent. That's the vision, isn't it?
48:10Yeah. I want the cocktail.
48:14We'll also have to imagine the lawn for the time being.
48:17That and much of the planned garden
48:19await kinder planting conditions deeper into spring
48:23and the labour to do it.
48:25The other great outdoor expanse, the roof,
48:28has been patched for the time being
48:30but will need to be replaced,
48:32a reminder that Blackburn is a project in perpetuity.
48:39Oh!
48:42Welcome to the saloon, Anthony.
48:44This is what I was hoping for.
48:46The grandeur of the whole house is written in this space.
48:49The thing, though, that impresses the most
48:51is just how welcoming and warm it's feeling now
48:54and that's because it's so light in here.
48:56It doesn't feel stuffy, you know,
48:58and I think originally it might have felt a bit dour
49:01and a bit sort of closed in on things.
49:03You know, it has... It's breathing.
49:05It is. Yeah, the house feels like that.
49:07It feels like the house has relaxed into its scale.
49:10That's a lovely way of putting it.
49:12Rather than being dinky.
49:14Yeah.
49:15There were a lot of dinky things before.
49:17Lee and Edward are billing this as a salon,
49:20a warm and stylish reception room
49:22playing into the adjacent dining room
49:25with its 20-seat table crying out for a crowd,
49:29as is the room across the way.
49:33This be the formal living room?
49:35It's very lovely and it's very yellow.
49:38LAUGHTER
49:41Edward's statement style is on show here.
49:44It is quite an eclectic mix.
49:46This formal living room is disarmingly playful.
49:49This is what's called country house style,
49:52a collection of things, of pieces, furniture, artworks,
49:56over generations, which, you know,
49:59we're not from sort of some landed gentry family like that,
50:03but we've, in our own way, collected from online auctions
50:06and international travels and, yeah, the flea markets in Paris.
50:11And this is what makes it home for us.
50:14But perhaps above all,
50:16these grand ground floor spaces are a staged base camp
50:20for Blackburn's peak triumph,
50:22the suspended staircase to the stars above.
50:26Beautiful staircase.
50:28Absolutely.
50:29And the corbels here looking very elegant.
50:31Yeah, both hallways were closed off
50:33and we opened them back up again
50:36and we've had to remake about 16 corbels in the house,
50:40but put them back as it was, so get the light through.
50:43Light through. I can see the tree through there.
50:45You can.
50:46Gorgeous.
50:48Turns out these stairs are a climb through time.
50:57Now, this is a surprise, though.
50:59I mean, I did not expect mid-century vibes in an 1895 farmhouse.
51:04So what's going on here?
51:06Well, we wanted that element of surprise with the house
51:09as you sort of move, you know, come up the different levels.
51:12Yeah.
51:14Alongside the period surprises,
51:16there are reminders of the home's actual heritage
51:19from the original implements that made it.
51:22And this, Anthony, what's this?
51:24It's a tool used from the original construction of the house.
51:27Oh, right. OK, it's got a bit of weight to it.
51:29It is. It was used for crushing the lime mortar
51:32and it was a gift to us.
51:34To the characters who've inhabited it.
51:36Who's that over there in that photograph?
51:38That is the wonderful June when she was four years old
51:41with her younger brother.
51:43She turned 100 this year in May.
51:45These are when the family moved in in 1922.
51:47Magic.
51:55So this is the green room.
51:58And for those inhabitants to come,
52:01each guest room has a signature colour and style of its own.
52:05It's not the green I was expecting.
52:07I thought we would see some deep bottle greens,
52:09you know, Federation period sort of thing.
52:11But this is very pushed back.
52:13Like a sorbet.
52:15There you go. Like a sorbet.
52:17There are other coloured rooms. What have you got?
52:19Next door we've got a pink room
52:21and then down the hall a yellow and a blue.
52:23Everything's got a story.
52:25Everything's got a reason for being.
52:27For Lee and Edward, life in a pokey corner
52:30has now become one of almost overwhelming choice.
52:36We've learnt to live for four years in a very rudimentary way.
52:40Yeah.
52:41We've just got to adjust, I guess, in some form to it
52:44because, yeah, in a sense we've become institutionalised
52:48when you've got an oven out on the back veranda
52:51and it's minus five and you're, you know, cooking a roast.
52:54Yeah.
52:55Even having a kitchen is novel now, but in a good way.
52:58Yeah.
52:59So, yeah, I'm sure we will adjust
53:02and start enjoying the space, living in the space
53:05because that's what it's... Yeah.
53:07Yeah.
53:08That's what it's about.
53:09I'm sort of imagining you both getting past the moment
53:11where you're sort of having a long weekend away in your own house
53:14by going from the servants' quarters
53:16to spend a night somewhere in New Zealand...
53:18Weekend away.
53:19..going back.
53:20Yeah.
53:21Yeah.
53:22Let's talk about money for a second
53:24because you started off with $1.3 million as your budget.
53:28Where did you end up?
53:29Two.
53:30$2 million.
53:32Alright, so not quite double, but that's quite a bit more.
53:35It is a chunk.
53:36Where did all of that extra come into the picture?
53:39So we got to the point where we were building five bathrooms
53:42and we thought, let's build the remaining.
53:45So we now have nine in total.
53:47Good Lord.
53:48And a bedroom in the tower suite there.
53:51We decided to finish that and do all of that too.
53:54What about the timeframe?
53:55Because I met you 27 months ago.
53:58Remind me how long you thought this was going to take.
54:01It was going to originally take us six to nine months.
54:05It's very hard getting people to commit to do a heritage home.
54:09Yeah, right.
54:10And I suppose a little bit remotely as well.
54:12Yeah.
54:13I think the most important thing is that the...
54:15not just the physical, but the emotional investment
54:17you've already put in here is paying back already
54:20massive dividends to both of you.
54:22And that feeling that you get when you walk in the house
54:25is one of warmth and, I think, happiness.
54:28And that's what you're aiming for.
54:29That's a home.
54:30And as you say, the memories and the layers
54:32are all here for us to see and feel.
54:34Well done.
54:36Thank you, Anthony.
54:46CHEERING
54:50What a surprise!
54:51Awesome.
54:53Dave, you're right, the horse is.
55:00Good to see you.
55:01Good to see you.
55:09Thank you so much for coming tonight
55:12to celebrate an end point and a start point.
55:14I'd like to toast every one of you here.
55:16And also, here's to the house.
55:19CHEERING
55:24I think what we've done is extraordinary
55:26because actually they're bringing the house forward
55:28for another 100 years.
55:29It's solid.
55:30Everything's waterproof now, needless to say.
55:32No, it is absolutely extraordinary.
55:34I really do appreciate the fact that they love the house
55:36as much as we do.
55:38It's fantastic.
55:44When Lee and Edward bought Blackburn,
55:47it was a giant falling-down relic of a lost era.
55:51Strict of its land, its purpose as a homestead
55:54for generations of sheep farmers,
55:56starting with George Weir back in 1895,
55:59was a note for the history books.
56:02So just imagine old man Weir's surprise if he could see it now.
56:06Still imposing, but rich in comfort and grand country elegance.
56:12Thanks to Edward and Lee's vision, determination and energy,
56:16Blackburn is once again brimming with people
56:19and bursting with life.
56:21And the occasional clink of a champagne glass.
56:26CHEERING
56:42BIRDS CHIRP