50 australiancountry.net.auMY COUNTRY LIFE
Clockwise
from above:
Jane and her
granddaughter,
Isabella, enjoy
quality time together;
Richard’s chair
recalls the important
role he had in the
farm’s creation; the
homestead frames
views of the garden
and paddocks.
The European history of the Orange district of
central-western NSW goes back almost to the
foundation of colony. A steady fl ow of pastoralists
followed in the wake of the crossing of the Blue
Mountains as squatters and their stock took up
runs on the vast plains west of the Great Dividing
Range. The trickle became a torrent with the
discovery of Australia’s fi rst payable gold deposits
at Ophir in 1851. Further gold was uncovered
throughout the region in the 1860s and ’70s and,
although fortunes have fl uctuated through the
years, contemporary extraction methods mean
that mining has once again become a signifi cant
industry in the area.
More than 130 years after that fi rst discovery, Jane
Cowper and her late husband, Richard, also thought
they’d hit the mother lode when they went prospecting
for a country property in the Orange region. They’dmoved to town in 1980, where Richard was a clinical
psychologist at the local community health centre and,
soon after, started looking for space to raise a family,
enjoy a bucolic setting and run a few cattle. They found
what they were looking for in a 25-acre (10-hectare)
block in the rolling hills near the hamlet of Forest
Reefs, about 10 kilometres from the historic village of
Millthorpe and 25km from Orange.
At that stage, Orange was a thriving service
centre for the surrounding agricultural land, which
has a long history of apple, stone fruit and table grape
production, as well as sheep, cattle and grain growing.
Its renaissance as one of the state’s premier cool-climate
wine regions was in its very early days, but Jane and
Richard saw the potential of their beautiful block with
its views to Mount Canobolas in the distance and
embraced the opportunity to turn it into the site for
their new home.
Richard took three months leave and worked with a
local builder to build the house. “Our son, James, was
two and daughter Prue was a baby when we moved
in,” Jane recalls. “We fi nished the house as fi nances
permitted and in the time we could spare as we added
Harriette and Gabriella to the family.”
The dream existence came to an abrupt halt, however,
when Richard died at only 45 and Jane became the sole
carer for their young family. Her training as a registered
nurse and practical nature meant that she was able to
maintain their hobby-farm base, while the children
completed their education.