Auchendarroch at Mt Barker: Keith visits the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia

The ever-growing and always busy Adelaide Hills town of Mt Barker is dominated on its higher southern side by the landmark mansion, Auchendarroch. It was the summer house for Robert Barr Smith and his family, and it’s a vivid reminder of how a few nineteenth century South Australians became fabulously rich, owning endless pastoral leases and investing in the hugely profitable Moonta and Wallaroo copper mines.

The original two storey Oakfield Hotel on the site served the mail coaches on their way to the main Murray crossing at Wellington, and there’s a bit of it within that is still going.

“We’re in the old pub dining room - and it’s nice to know that through all the house changes, it’s always been that, all the way from 1860. And now we’ve restored it, it is still the dining room”, the new owner proudly told me. Bob Wallis, of cinema family fame, had presided over the manor’s meticulous restoration, including its oak fireplaces with intimate and mysterious Dickensian tiles acquired by Robert Barr Smith. His public gestures still mark our city. The Anglican St Peter’s Cathedral spires, for instance, thrust skywards with the help of a $2 million donation (in today’s money) from this Presbyterian son of a Scottish minister. The University of Adelaide’s classically grand Barr Smith Library, too, bears his name through an endowment from his huge estate when he died in 1915.

Back at Auchendarroch, Bob Wallis eagerly showed us the billiard room, now available to adjoining tavern patrons. Perhaps the nursing staff used it during the house’s many years as a convalescent branch of Memorial Hospital. No doubt the RAAF crews enjoyed it as they took a breather from World War II deployments. The restoration here and elsewhere erases the sad fate of the dream home. After a few years when eight families lived here as a community, a developer left it idle and the squatters moved in.

“It was like a war zone,” Bob lamented. “Very sad. They’d lit fires in here to keep warm”.

In its heyday, Auchendarroch was a cool retreat for the Barr Smith family for up to six months each year. (The city residence was Torrens Park, now part of Scotch College). With up to thirty guests staying for Christmas, Joanna could always retreat to her own spacious morning room. The painters are still at work in there.

The transformation is stunningly complete next door. Bob’s daughter, Michelle, loves what they now call the ballroom most of all.

“I think it’s absolutely beautiful,” she said, as we sat in a generous alcove with views to the south. “It’s a privilege to sit exactly where Robert and Joanna spent so much time”. A century-old photograph shows them in their drawing room bay window. This grand space was the most daunting for the family, Michelle explained. “The beautiful wallpaper was so badly damaged, blackened with mildew”.

The William Morris pattern, “Spring Thicket”, with its rich greens all hand-block printed, is back to its glorious best. The Barr Smiths were among the London craft designer’s best customers anywhere, as the Art Gallery of SA’s lavish collection reveals in its current exhibition.

From the cavernous entrance hall with its fine return staircase in oak and giant panelled door, to the hand-wrought finials atop its mansard roof, Auchendarroch is the work of architect, John Grainger, who also left the Albert Bridge by the Adelaide Zoo as a legacy. He was also the father of one of Australia’s most famous composers, Percy Grainger.

There were once eighty acres round the Barr Smith hills home, and so where the local juniors now gambol in a creek side park, a dairy herd once grazed. Round the house, the great trees that gave rise to its name add to its majesty. Auchendarroch is a Celtic word for “holy place of the oaks”. Robert Barr Smith was a keen botanist, and just a year after the completion of the house, in 1880, he planted a rare Golden Oak. It is probably the biggest specimen in Australia, and is currently protected by long panels of shade cloth to try to get it through a traumatic period.

On the northern side, several acres of lawns and rose beds stretch to the nearest road, flanked by a long avenue of oaks. The vast croquet lawn has been re-instated, and I queried whether it might even play host to a training session for Bob Wallis’ revered Sturt Football Club.

“I love them dearly”, he chuckled. “But no. It wouldn’t go down well with the wife. She’d be horrified. But Christmas carols, they’d be lovely.” We can expect much more, then, then the latest movie releases at this modern tavern and cinema complex that is anchored by Bob’s new love, Auchendarroch.

The great home is back in the hands of a family, then, and thank goodness for that. They’ve never run a bistro-style tavern before, but the glass-walled-garden-view eatery seems to be going down very well with the hills folk. The Wallis family have always had an eye for the big picture, you might say, and so they’re on familiar ground with the state-of-the-art seven screen cinema complex. (They began the first drive-in in the state, the Blueline, and run the only two survivors, while they also include the heritage Picadilly and Chelsea theatres in their chain). It is clearly noticeable that the sweeping lines of this Mt Barker addition are in the colours of his beloved Blues. It’s just as well Auchendarroch is in the midst of a hills stronghold for Sturt.

Details:

Auchendarroch House Wallis Tavern
Ph: (08) 8391 6100
Fax: (08) 8391 6122
Email: wallistavern@wallis.com.au

Mt Barker Cinemas
Ph: (08) 8391 2777
Fax: (08) 8391 2788
Email: mtbarker@wallis.com.au

Further information:
Michelle Berry, Functions Co-ordinator
Adelaide Road
Mt Barker, SA, 5251