Anlaby Bed & Breakfast

About an hour and a half's drive from Adelaide and you're into the rolling hills near Kapunda, an area rich in history. This is sheep country, and in the early days of the colony, you'd be forgiven for thinking each fleece was golden. Such was the wealth generated, that the early landowners had soon established fabulous homesteads like Anlaby Station, the original home of the Dutton family.

Last year Postcards visited the Station for a quick tour of the grounds and the twenty-one room homestead. But there's so much more that we thought it was worth a second look. In its heyday under Henry "The Squire" Dutton, garden parties at Anlaby were legendary. At one point, fourteen gardeners tended all this, including six thousand roses. But Anlaby was also a working station with sixty thousand sheep scattered up to forty kilometres away.

"They had grooms, gardeners, carpenters and maintenance people together with shearers and stockmen who all worked around here and a lot of them lived in various houses around the property and they had quite a large staff here looking after the horses".

"And this was really a mini city?" "Yes, it was like a little village".

In fact Anlaby was named after a village in Yorkshire, and while for some it was a case of "to the Manor Born", for others it was serious work. The old Shearers' quarters have now been converted into the Groom's Cottage, while other workers bunked in the old manager's house. And it was from here that he could keep an eye on the "goings on" in the quadrangle below. And by the end of the week, the safe would be opened and the wages distributed to the seventy staff who kept Anlaby going.

"Well, this must be about 1860. The homestead would have been built first, we don't know the exact date when this particular building was done, but I would say it must have been after the main house was built."

Hans and Gill Albers are gradually returning Anlaby to its former glory. For Gill it's a never ending quest to tame more and more of the surrounding garden. As you walk around the grounds, you can't help but be struck by the grandeur of what was for nearly 140 years, the home to five generations of the Dutton family. Set amongst the gardens is the folly, the perfect viewing platform from which to watch the family tennis match.

In fact, it's worth setting aside a couple of hours to stroll through the gardens and around the village, with its stables laden with Hans pride and joy, the biggest private carriage collection in Australia. For years all of this was the preserve of Adelaide's rich and famous, not this once hidden treasure is open to all of us.

"Unless you were a socialite in Adelaide, you wouldn't have known about the Duttons". "When they come down the mountain here towards Anlaby, they have no idea that there's a big place like this around, and the size of it is incredible and most people would never believe that something like this was built out here and is still in such good condition".

A night in the Groom's Cottage costs $60.00 per person and includes provisions for your own country style breakfast. The old Manager's House, now called the Manor House, costs $150.00 a double. For these and other accommodation options at Anlaby, contact Hans and Gill Albers on 8566 2465

For more information email: info@postcards.sa.com.au