When the need to experience the country strikes, few destinations can beat Wilga Station and its rustic architecture embedded in the landscape.
Fully off the grid, the Farmers Hut, designed by owners Hamish and Mez Keith, is perfectly attuned to its environment, with everything you need and nothing else.
Effectively a wedge-shaped building containing an open bedroom with a bathroom and kitchen tucked out of sight, the materiality is simplified luxury with polished concrete floors, a large sheepskin rug and a vast and comfortable bed in tones of sage and mushroom.
Jutting out from the room is a large day bed window seat with glazing to three sides that places the view fully within the room. A discrete stack of rocks eliminates a distant neighbour.
The building itself is well suited to the environment with a curved roof bedded down with 40 tonnes of earth and a layer of rich green turf. Corten steel breaks the line between turf and timber cladding, while neatly stacked timber fills the side void. Both the timber and steel are ageing to soft shades that sit well among the small copse of elm trees and antique sheep race that form the entrance.
However, it is the location that makes this farm stay extraordinary. Perched on top of a small hill in the middle of a working sheep farm. The Wilga Hut is deliberately high on a ridge, to take in the entire southern view and allow the passive design of earth, heft and glazing to maintain a comfortable 16-24 temperature range.
The Central West of regional NSW can be exceedingly hot and by placing the face away from the sun the room is usable all year. During winter an indoor fireplace and outdoor firepit are available, but really more for fun than any need of additional warmth.
So, back to this being the best place for a hut. Picture this. Sitting in the daybed reading, you glance up and there, playing on the rocks are about 15 lambs. The more sensible mothers are grazing within feet of the window, but the lambs are gambolling and cavorting, jumping from rock to rock, while bleating a gentle racket.
Needless to say, the book is abandoned and the rest of the afternoon is spent watching lambs play as more and more come to join the flock. And then the sun sets and it is truly spectacular with great shafts of light spilling gold across the entire vista, absolute bliss.
Wilga Station
wilgastation.com.au
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