Southern Highlands hotel Osborn House revealed
The welcome mat is out at this freshly opened plush country hotel. Take an exclusive first look at Osborn House.
In the lowering light of late afternoon, the vegetation assumes the shapes of storybook trees. And make those the recognisable lines of northern hemisphere woodland species. If a Beatrix Potter bunny were to appear in a bonnet or a squirrel in a waistcoat sidle up to offer me a G&T, it would scarcely surprise. But, wait, did those garden “sculptures” just move? What I had thought was an arty garden installation turns out to be kangaroos, and the mob of 15 adults and a perky juvenile is on the hop to feast on sweet, springy grass freshly moistened by a light shower.
I’m gathered with fellow guests on a broad, elevated terrace and we are mesmerised. While the elongated views and blue hills on the horizon remind us of England’s best-known beauty spots, perhaps the Cotswolds or the Peak District, we are at Bundanoon in the NSW Southern Highlands, within cooee of Meryla State Forest and Morton National Park, in reach of marvels such as Fairy Bower Falls and Bonnie View Lookout. And the building standing as backdrop to this twilight tableau, while originally conceived in old-country manor style, has just reopened as a design-driven luxury hotel.
This is Osborn House, built by local businessman George Osborn in 1892 as a family residence named The Knoll and with various incarnations since. I first visited in the 1980s during its run as Solar Springs health retreat. I slept in a tiny room with my friend W and the pair of us had to flit down a dim corridor to use the loo. We giggled like schoolgirls during the “fitness” sessions. We may or may not have had an illicit bottle of wine and a stash of Cherry Ripes in our backpacks.
The new hotel interpretation couldn’t be further removed from any such sense of deprivation and earnest endeavour. It’s generous, fun, unexpected, the realisation of a dream project for founder and director Adam Abrams, well known for his “portable beach club” The Island, on Sydney Harbour, and Matteo dining venues. With co-founder Lawrance Ryko, Abrams spent five years looking for the ideal site in a “one of a kind setting” within a two-hour radius of the state capital.
What first takes my eye is the whimsy of the decor and myriad creative collaborations. Byron Bay-based “artist in residence” Jai Vasicek is in the house, as it were, during my visit, putting finishing touches to a series of ethereal pastel murals along the walls of corridors and public spaces. He’s crafting a playful trail leading from his Night Garden oils hung in the main lounge. Tag along with his petal-blowing, doe-eyed muses surrounded by tendrils and vines. The recurring motifs bring a brilliant unity and unexpected personality to the decor, seamlessly integrating with the accomplished look of interior designer Linda Boronkay, well-known for her work with the Soho House international hospitality group.
Interior architect Alan McMahon of Sydney’s Mac Design Studio has led the structural remake, creating a sense of flow and openness. Lighting, too, is a key contributor to the classy mood, with customised Venetian-made petalled ceiling and wall sconces, plus voluptuous table and standard lamps, all creating a golden glow that enhances architectural flourishes that ease from late Victorian and nouveau into the geometrics of deco. The palette is sage and the restful greens of countryside, hills and forest, all with a direct nod to the cool-climate scenery beyond.
It’s a country-house hotel in the expected mode of deeply cushioned comfort, and you’d half-expect Miss Marple to be knitting in a wingback chair, poised behind the parlour palms, awaiting the summons to scones and tea or a gravy-soaked roast dinner. But, wait, the kitchen is headed by Segundo Farrell and Luz Gimenez, proteges of South American “fire cooking” supremo Francis Mallmann, and you’re more likely to find a springy Argentinian flan with dulce de leche on the puds menu than trifle and custard. It’s excellent fare for appetites sharpened by restorative rural air but delicate in execution and in tune with contemporary trends.
Meals are served in Dinah’s or more casually in the lounge-style George’s, the names echoing those of the original owners.
Take a banquette seat, a velvet chair, sit at the bar or beside the cosy fire or loll on the terrace and drink in the views. These are spaces of unique flexibility that range off the lobby in companionable curves and clusters.
The 22-room inventory includes seven newly built freestanding cabins below the main house, ranged towards the forest. These are wonderful little blackened timber hide-outs, with fireplaces (and chopped wood stacked so artistically it seems sacrilege to remove a log), star-gazing skylights, bathtubs on their private decks, and a decor style that could easily be termed rustic-chic. Then there are family terrace guestrooms with a glassed veranda annexe that could combine for a small house-party booking, plus a pair of wheelchair-accessible options on a garden terrace. The selection of chambers in the main house are all of good size, crowned by The Highland Suite category with an imperious balcony and, if not the prospect of an antlered monarch of the glen looming into view, then at least a flotilla of monarch butterflies sailing past.
Guest quarters are all beautifully detailed and thoughtfully conceived, from navy-piped Frette bed linen of talcum softness and adjustable reading lights to thick bespoke curtains that pool on to timber floors and huge shower recesses. Contemporary four-poster beds feature scalloped silhouettes, handwoven scatter rugs are from long-established Sydney firm Cadrys. There’s marble and oak in abundance, vintage pieces such as smoked-glass traymobiles on casters and, in some room categories, screens around bathtubs that have a coy French boudoir feel.
Wandering the property’s gently tilted acreage (a rotunda here; a hedged room, a la Vita Sackville-West, there) is a treat. Stroll down the allee of radiata pines, admire flouncy dahlias and high hedges. The kitchen garden is under way and a cooking school is planned in a converted on-site dwelling. Or have a hit of tennis, a spot of croquet or boules, a long swim in the 25m heated pool under a vast conservatory roof, succumb to the magical hands of therapist Maddie in the small day spa, where massages come with names such as OMG and Rock Star. Or hide away in the library or games room with books from an eclectic collection, a pack of playing cards and a single-malt snifter from nearby Joadja Distillery.
You’re in one of the prettiest pockets of NSW and surrounded by the villages of Bundanoon and Exeter so much pottering about the parish awaits. There’s a mapped farmgate guide to the dozen or so producers who supply Osborn House’s kitchen, from Duckfoot Farm to Moonacres Bakery. Or put on those walking boots. I join the hotel’s nature guide Josiah for a morning ramble in the Morton National Park, past stands of scribbly gum and silver-top ash, spying superb fairy wrens and a lone echidna, down to the boarded-up opening of the Erith Coal Mine, closed in 1915. It’s a fine, blue-sky start to the day but I’m told the trail is equally as wonderful and even mysterious when you can climb down below the mists, as it were. Back at Osborn House, the clouds are now bunched and grey. Bundanoon or the mystical once-in-a-century Brigadoon? Thankfully, Osborn House sits in a setting of transformational alchemy, 365 days a year.
In the know
Bundanoon is a little over two hours by motorways and connecting roads from Sydney or Canberra. Opening rates at Osborn House from about $660 a room midweek, including full breakfast and in-room soft drinks bar.
Susan Kurosawa was a guest of Osborn House.
