Legacy of 19th-century 'squatocracy'

Gillian Vine visits Woolmers, a grand Tasmanian property.

Australia is littered with grand homes built by the "squatocracy", those 19th-century men whose land-holdings were staggering.

Woolmers, in Tasmania, is typical.

When the first owner, Thomas Archer, died in 1850, he owned some 14,000ha, most of it prime grazing land. By the end of World War 2, the farm was reduced to just over 250ha.

The last of the family, Thomas Edward Cathcart Archer, died in 1994 and bequeathed the property to the Woolmers Foundation Inc, which runs tours of the house - the guides are in period costume - and provides self-contained accommodation.

In recent years, the garden has not had the same attention as the house and its outbuildings, so the popular practice of growing only plants that would have been familiar to the first owner has not been followed. Such options may well lie in the future, but gardens do evolve and this was, until less than 20 years ago, the home of the Archers.

There is plenty to interest the gardener, though, and that includes plants Thomas Archer would have known when he acquired the original block of land about 1817.

Tasmanian natives are conspicuously absent. Spotted in the garden were a couple of hebes and a lemonwood, possibly Australian but looking more like New Zealand varieties.

Archer, like many 19th-century European settlers, was probably more interested in replicating the gardens he remembered in England and, although he may not have planted the elms, poplars and ashes, he would have been familiar with such trees.

Also reminiscent of England are the spring bulbs, matchheads (Muscari), which are teamed with pale blue Ipheion uniflorum; double daffodils (possibly Narcissus Telamonius Plenus) and Paperwhite narcissus; and snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum).

The garden is walled - some say to make the property easy to defend if the convict labourers rebelled - so it provides shelter for numerous spring bulbs and border plants.

Matched gates set into the wall face one another across the garden. The gates would not be out of place in an English park, but their sandstone supports are typically Tasmanian.

Outside the wall is a vegetable garden, whose small beds have low wooden borders and anything that a rabbit might fancy is protected by netting.

Fruit trees, most of them old varieties, have been espaliered on the walls and the garden's centrepiece is an attractive fountain.

Woolmers is an easy drive from Launceston and makes a pleasant half-day out, not only for the house and gardens but the old machinery on display in the property's outbuildings.

See www.woolmers.com.au and, for more about open gardens in Tasmania, see www.bloomingtasmania.com.