Skye Leckie shares life on the farm that means so much to her
When society queen Skye Leckie drove into a southern highlands farm with her chief executive husband David, she knew it was a must have. Three years after David’s death she wants others to know how special it is. Watch the video
When society queen Skye Leckie drove into Mulberry Farm with her rock-star chief executive husband David Leckie by her side she knew the property was a must have.
It has been three years since her husband, a legendary boss of network television news, died and Leckie now wants the world to know how important the farm, in the rural Southern Highlands belt of Robertson, is to her family.
“I know when Farmer Dave, as he called himself, bought it, I don’t think he had any idea how it would become the staple of his property portfolio,” Leckie tells Mansion over a cup of tea in the grand shiraz-coloured living room of Mulberry Farm.
“Calling himself Farmer Dave, he (initially) had very little knowledge of the ways of the land, however he quickly adapted to rural life.
“With everything he did he learnt very quickly, and with a team of three he set about running the farm including buying and selling the cattle. The cut and thrust of farming was just like television.”
Skye Leckie – a Sydney philanthropist and self-described “lover of life” – describes Mulberry Farm, positioned in the bucolic belt of Robertson deep in the NSW Southern Highlands, as being very much like the UK’s Cotswolds.
“It’s sort of a traditional English country house, yet it’s got a bit of modern in it … whatever the feeling, it’s one that people say to me when they walk in: ‘Oh gosh, I’ve arrived home’,” she says.
“It’s very comfy but then it’s got a bit of glamour – not glamour that is the wrong word – it’s a bit old world.”
But there was tension when the couple purchased the property in 2012 because David wanted to rename the farm, originally called Marinda Springs, “Ponderosa”.
“I just went ‘You have got to be joking’. I said over my dead body.”
But she went on to install 12 speakers down the driveway, so when the gate opened the Bonanza theme music played.
“It was absolutely hilarious … when people arrive (the music) gives them a sense of … ‘OK, I am going to have some fun here.”’
Leckie, who seldom agrees to interviews, says the 40.5ha estate replete with a tennis court, infinity swimming pool and four-bedroom homestead, served the Leckies well during Covid when the then family of four, Skye, David, and their two sons Harry (now 27) and Ben (now 24), were forced into lockdown.
“With David’s failing health … we were the lucky ones to be able to ride out Covid-19 here at his beloved farm,” she says.
“Covid allowed Harry and Ben to really get to know their father and for Davo to get to know his beautiful sons.”
“Over many years of his time as CEO of Nine and Seven, family time was limited. I have said this about Davo, his first love was always his beloved networks, the boys and myself, we knew he loved us, however TV always came first.
“I think I am safe in saying this, he is the only executive to take two networks to No.1.
“The fact we were all together as David’s health failed, it was fantastic that we had this amazing time together.”
These days Leckie has started rebuilding her life and now spends significant time in Europe visiting her sons – confiding that being holed up during winter at Mulberry Farm might be lonely.
She cites her new-found ability to fly around Europe as a sign that she is regaining her old equilibrium.
“We’d all been through Covid and then I’d lost David and … suddenly (you) lose a bit of confidence. I think if I look back on last year the best thing I did was I managed to get myself on Ryanair around Europe.
“I know it’s pathetic and a first world problem but it just brought back a sense that I’m capable. I can get on now with the next part of my life.”
When in Australia, Leckie divides her time between her apartment in the Pomeroy complex in inner Sydney’s Potts Point, where she has enjoyed decades of Eastern Suburbs high life, and Mulberry Farm.
Apart from her staff of three at Mulberry Farm, on the day Mansion visits, Leckie, who was awarded an OAM in 2016 for decades of tireless charity work, has two house guests – her long-time friend and former NSW minister Michael Yabsley and Luis, a three-year-old cavalier King Charles spaniel that the friends co-parent.
Yabsley is in residence this March night to attend a dinner for 14 guests which Leckie, who is freshly back from Europe, is hosting.
“Each of the bedrooms have doors onto this north terrace so if you come and stay and you are sick of sitting here talking you can easily just go into your room and read your book. Just have chill out time and be able to go out the doors and for a walk around the garden without having to tell anyone you are going,” she says.
The green, blue, and yellow bedroom doors are adorned with name placards so guests can’t get mixed up in the large house.
Along with tennis and swimming, Leckie, a farmer’s daughter, has devised a 40-minute Sunday morning walk for her house guests – meandering through three rainforests and around Mulberry Farm’s dam.
“This place is home to potatoes and it’s Babe country,” she says, adding that the escarpment drops down into Kangaroo Valley.
There’s also plenty of intimate lunch spots and a vegetable garden brimming with rhubarb, basil and tomatoes while David planted 40 trees in the hope of yielding truffles.
In the 12 years since the Leckies purchased Mulberry Farm, there’s been much work and restoration both inside and out. And Leckie is already planning more refurbishment of her beloved property, which dominates a hill and overlooks the surrounding farms and countryside south down to Wollongong.
From July, she plans to convert the garage into another two bedrooms, “but it won’t have an ensuite. I can’t stand that, I like everyone to have their own bathroom’’.
She also plans to add a butler’s kitchen and expand the laundry.
Mulberry Farm is hidden from the highway, the land stepping down an escarpment to reveal the large single-level homestead designed by renowned local architect Richard Rowe.
Since the Leckies acquired it, Sydney-based Poco Designs’ Charlotte O’Neil has reconfigured the four-bedroom homestead’s kitchen to make it more “country and rustic”, added a feminine conservatory, to sit and watch the “amazing storms” coming up from Wollongong, and enclosed a breezeway.
“The conservatory just gives you the feeling that you are outside,” she says.
For David, there was a suite of rooms enabling him to watch over his prized herd of black Angus cattle as well as the thunderstorms that roll up from the south.
Never mind that lightning strikes from these thunderstorms have killed many a tree on the property where a rose garden in David’s honour, a gift from David’s Melbourne friends, will be installed.
As ever Leckie is taking a positive position on her new life at Mulberry Farm.
“As my life starts to fall back into place, as only one knows if you have lost someone, the future for me looks amazing with two fantastic boys that I am so proud of. I intend to do as much philanthropic work as I can but at the same time enjoy everything that David has given us. We are so unbelievably lucky.”
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