Bundanon

The site of Bundanon was originally the land of the Wodi Wodi people of the Yuin nation who speak the Dharawal language. It was first sighted by Europeans in 1805 and was given as a land grant to Richard Henry Browne in 1832. The conditions of receiving a land grant at the time were that the land had to be worked through clearing and fencing, up to 55 acres in five years. Browne was a merchant who travelled by sea between Australia and India. He did not work the land so it reverted back to the government in 1837.

It was sold to Dr Kenneth McKenzie of Scotland for £400 on 19 March 1838. McKenzie was born in Dundonell, Rosshire, Scotland in 1806. He worked as a doctor in London, Dublin and Paris before immigrating to Sydney in 1837. He came to Bundanon with his wife in 1838. They built a timber house on the edge of the tree line above one of the water sources. Their five children were born in this timber house: Helen in 1839, Mary 1841, Murdo 1843, Hugh 1845 and Julia Ann in 1848.

The disastrous flood of 1860 impacted dramatically on the landscape of Bundanon and would have hastened the construction of the two story Georgian stone homestead which had begun in the 1850s. Sandstone blocks from the local area, cedar from the property and lime mortar made from shell deposits collected from the Shoalhaven River where used. Doors, ceilings and all internal fine joinery were of the local cedar except for the floors which are hardwood. The house was built on high ground above the flood level and was completed in 1866, the year McKenzie’s second son Hugh turned 21.

Attached to the rear of the building was a skillion kitchen with stone chimney and off the rear north west corner was a school room. The floods of 1870 had an even greater impact on Bundanon and surrounding properties than those ten years earlier. In a letter to his sister Hugh described it as “…the mother of all floods…” and that it had ruined Bundanon. Fences, yards and buildings were washed away; however the strategically sited main house with skillion kitchen were above the flood level.

The weatherboard servants quarters was built after 1870 and the free standing kitchen with cistern was built in the 1880s and aligned to the main house. Also built in the 1870s were the managers cottage and the singleman’s hut. The singleman’s hut is the remaining half of two back to back mirror image structures which provided overnight accommodation for farm and station staff. The missing half was built of timber and probably burnt down. The huts isolation demonstrates the social distancing that occurred in nineteenth century society. A one time an Aboriginal man lived in this hut and worked on the property. He told stories to the McKenzie children and taught them how to draw and paint.

The McKenzie’s lived at Bundanon for four generations. In 1922 Kenneth, grandson of the original Kenneth McKenzie and his daughter Helen were drowned. Helen had been to the Nowra show with her cousin Jean and was washing her pony in the river when she was swept away. Kenneth went to her help but both were drowned. The jacaranda tree at the front of the Homestead was planted in their memory. In 1926 the McKenzie family left Bundanon.

The property was leased out to various occupants for the next 45 years. For a large part of this time the Homestead was empty and fell into disrepair. In 1957 the Warren family with two teenaged sons came to live at Bundanon as tenants. They lived in the Homestead for twelve years, carried out general repairs and cared for the property. Both sons were married in this time and lived with their wives and later, children in the manager's and worker's cottages on the property. The family ran a successful dairy until the last few years when they changed to beef cattle.

Bundanon was sold out of the MaKenzie family to a local man Jim Lawarence in 1968. He sold it one year later to Sandra and Tony McGrath and Frank MacDonald. They carried out extensive house restoration including the installation of electricity, an upstairs ensuite and shared bathroom, shelving was added to the front downstairs bedroom turning it into a library, some timber floors were replaced and the roof was reconstructed retaining the original profile. By 1975 the cedar ceilings and most of the cedar doors and windows and the surrounds were painted white.

Most of the working buildings were removed from the grounds and a garden was installed. Kitchen and servants quarters were improved and a covered breezeway and pergola were built visually linking the three buildings together by 1969.

Arthur and Yvonne Boyd and their family had been living in England since 1959, coming home briefly in 1968. They returned to Australia in 1971 for Arthur to take up a Creative Fellowship at the ANU in Canberra. That summer Frank MacDonald invited Arthur and Yvonne to visit Bundanon for the weekend – they stayed for 10 days. It had an immediate and profound effect on Arthur's thinking and artwork. This visit reignited his love of landscape painting. In 1974 the Boyds purchased an adjoining property called Riversdale. They added two other lots of land and purchased a right of way. The McGraths and MacDonald tried to sell Bundanon to the NSW State Government with the idea that it be developed as a creative retreat. The Government were not interested and so they sold the property privately to the Boyds in 1979 for $800,000.