The refurbished 1897 cottage on Hills Creek Road, St Bathans, overlooks the rolling hills and Hawkdun Ranges that stood in for 1920s Montana in Jane Campion’s 2021 movie The Power of the Dog.
The movie, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, won Campion a best director gong in that year’s Academy Awards.
The breathtaking Maniototo landscape surrounding the cottage is also familiar to many New Zealanders through the paintings of Sir Grahame Sydney, who often featured the Hawkdun Ranges and the rolling grasslands around St Bathans.
Owner Lesley Anderson, who bought the then run-down cottage in 2005, said that she thought the sale was meant to be. She had lived in nearby Alexandra in the 1970s, where she taught and competed in ice-skating, and had often driven past the wee house on the corner.
“We thought ‘that’s a property that needs saving’. Then one time with my daughter and son-in-law, we’d done part of the Otago Rail Trail and were going back in the vehicle and it was for tender.”
The stone house, which locals say was built by Sarah Turner, the widow of the St Bathans publican, had been used as a post office and offered services to travellers, said Helen Flintoff, the Colliers real estate agent who is bringing the cottage on a 1098sqm section to auction on February 10.
“She also sold to the stagecoach travellers, which is why it is so close to the road,” she said.
The corner plot on State Highway 85 is about 12km from the gold mining tourist town (and former hub of the gold rush) of St Bathans, another 12km from the tiny settlement of Oturehua and is 20 minutes from Ranfurly, which is on the well-loved Otago Rail Trail. The biggest centre, Alexandra, is just over 45 minutes away.
When Anderson bought the house as a holiday home the house still had a huge hole knocked in its side from when it was used for 30 years as a garage for the local grader that ploughed the roads clear of snow every winter.
The floor was still gravel, and the family had to add a long-drop toilet while they lived on a campervan as they worked weekends on the property. Anderson said local regulations mean they couldn’t add a septic tank, but she investigated having a very large holding tank.
They started by hauling out trailer-loads of old machinery and junk.
They salvaged enough good timber to replace ceilings in the two bedrooms (Anderson thinks it was Baltic pine), but little flooring remained. Instead, the family put in new concrete floors, taking the opportunity to add underfloor insulation. They re-rolled the original corrugated iron roof to meet heritage requirements, again adding insulation.
Anderson said piping and conduits were installed for plumbing the bathroom and kitchen (the house has bore water), but so far there is only a partial kitchen with a coal range and hot water tank.
The windows were replaced by new ones from recycled wood, with dense safety glass for noise and insulation control as the heritage-style frames could not have double-glazing.
“The stone walls are nearly half a metre thick and when we dug out for the floor, the foundations go down probably another 700 – 800 millimetres.
“It’s no wonder it is still standing, it’s still all the original beams, it’s amazing.”
But time and age have put paid to her completing the project.
“It’s sad in a way, but I think I can’t do the work I need to do. Someone else can.
“We look forward to seeing what the new owner can do,” Anderson said, pointing to the tourism potential of being on the state highway between Alexandra and Ranfurly, and the growing artistic community at the nearby historic settlement of Oturehua.
Flintoff said the property has a CV of $160,000, but she expected bidding to start at $250,000.
“It’s a very rare and unique listing, it’s an iconic building that everyone knows. This is the first stone cottage I’ve ever listed. There are some abandoned ones left, but not many have been restored to this condition,” she said.
“It’s rare, so buyer enquiry has been so high, we’ve had locals, people from Otago, as well as North Islanders and some from Australia.
“We genuinely don’t know what it will go for as we have nothing we can compare it to,” adding that the house had been much-photographed over the years.
“The cottage has a new lease of life, but it [is] now perfectly positioned for the new owner to apply the finishing touches.”
Flintoff is also selling the next door property, also owned by Anderson.
The 1950s concrete and tile two-bedroom home on 2.9 hectares at 9 Hills Creek Road is being sold with a second piece of adjoining land on Wedderburn-Becks Road of 1.1ha, for a combined landholding of just over 4ha.
The property, which has an extensive solar power system in place, a wetback coal range and uses well water, is for sale with a deadline closing February 16.
Again, Flintoff could not say what the pair of properties, which have a combined CV of $731,000, would sell for as she said there have been no comparable sales in the district.
