Kookaburra Cottage

 Occasionally available to rent

Kookaburra Cottage, located on our entrance road, has been our residence and office since it was built in 2004. From time to time we travel on extended trips and during such occasions we will advertise in advance its tariff and availability here for booking just like other cottages.It is larger, better appointed and more homely than our standard professional cottage presentation.

Overview

Kookaburra is our largest and most luxuriously appointed cottage. It has not been rated by AAA but if it was we believe it would achieve close to 5-stars. Soft external lighting enables night-time arrivals to view beautiful reflections on the adjacent dam. Kookaburra is timber-framed but clad in compressed earth bricks we made on site. It has in-slab water heating, fully insulated and upstairs is air-conditioned. Earth bricks are also featured inside, mainly for temperature moderation reasons. Like all of our cottages, exposed Australian hardwood timber is extensively featured and downstairs floors are all tiled. As part of our commitment to sustainability, toilets are composting ones. Drinking water is separate from shower and laundry water and waste systems are streamed to allow maximum recycling.

Kitchen/dining

Kookaburra has a spacious farmhouse-style kitchen containing a Stanley wood stove with a water jacket to complement solar hot water heating and an Emilia gas stove. There is an internally/externally accessed wood cupboard. Large bifolding timber windows above the sink give the kitchen an outdoor feel. The kitchen is stocked with every appliance an accomplished cook is likely to require as well as enough crockery/cutlery etc to serve 10. The island unit has stools for social food preparation. The dining area, adjacent to the kitchen contains a large extendable-leaf english oak dining table and chairs capable of seating up to 10 people. It has a bookshelf containing a large number of cookbooks.

Lounge

There is a comfortable Moran chaise-longue, a separate 3-seater large lounge, swivelling lounge chair, coffee table, large format TV (set-top box for digital TV), DVD and CD. The lounge also contains a Saxon wood heater that also has a wetback to heat water. Curtains allow the timber bifolding windows and verandah door overlooking the dam to be warmly drawn during the winter.  

Downstairs bedroom

The main bedroom looks out over the verandah and dam. It has a king sized bed (the only one on site not divisable into singles), bedside tables, TV and DVD player and an oil-filled heater for casual use. It also has a walk-in robe and an ensuite toilet and shower.

Upstairs bedrooms

There are two carpeted upstairs bedrooms, one with a queen-sized bed and the other with a double sofa bed. Both can be used for study or work with slab desk-tops looking out over the dam through large picture windows. Both upstairs rooms have airconditioners that are especially useful during the summer.

Bathroom/toilets

Downstairs there is a bathroom with a bath and shower-over-bath separate from the main bedroom ensuite which contains a toilet and a shower. There is also a separate toilet. There is no bathrooms or toilet upstairs.

Laundry

The laundry has a large washing machine, dryer, iron and ironing board. Clothes can be hung to dry on the rear washing line.

Locked room/office

Kookaburra contains the Bawley Bush Cottages office off the eastern verandah downstairs. This room will be separately locked when the cottage is being used by guests. Access to it by staff will be required only occasionally or in an emergency (such as failure of on-site internet services). As far as is possible, if access is required it will be done with notice to booked guests.

Verandahs

Kookaburra has verandahs on three sides. The east verandah allows all-weather access from the double carport to the house. The north verandah allows hip-high access to the vegetable garden and the kitchen bi-folding windows open to here. To the west there is a large tiled and then an over-dam timber verandah which is just great for entertaining. A Weber gas oven-style BBQ and table-tennis table is at the northern end. There is no verandah to the south.

Dam makes Kookaburra unsuitable for children

The verandah looks out over the dam which, especially during the warmer months, is fringed with flowering water lillies and populated by native ducks. The dam supplies garden water to the entire property and also delivers bath, shower and hot-water service water for all cottages to a filter and treatment system on top of the hill. It is the immediate proximity of the cottage to the dam and the diving board from the verandah which makes Kookaburra an unsuitable cottage for families with young children or indeed for anyone who is not an experienced capable swimmer. The water is opaque, untreated, generally cold except during summer and up to 6m deep. The fencing on the verandah is not required to be, nor is it, in any way compliant with pool fencing regulations required of town residential lots or of rural lots on smaller acreage. Though there is a diving board and we privately use the dam for swimming we hereby advise prospective guests that the dam is a potential health, safety and drowning risk. Our accommodation contract prohibits the use of dams for swimming in by guests. Please inform your party of this prohibition and prevent anyone from breaching it.