If I have a complaint about Rosecliffe Boutique Farm Cottages it is this: no one warned me about Ewart’s Road!
OK, I’m old and I ride an e-bike with a heavy battery attached to it, but I thought the only street in Noosa Shire that could stop me was Bayview Road, above Little Cove.
And then I discovered Ewart’s, which rises ridiculously steeply from the beautiful Pinbarren Valley for 2.5 kilometres before depositing one at the gates of Rosecliffe at an elevation of 300 metres. And I had to push a bike the whole way.
On the other hand, pausing to catch my breath on several occasions, I turned around and marvelled at the view, a panorama of lush green slopes punctuated by the occasional volcanic plug.
It doesn’t get much better.
And then, following instructions in the absence of my hosts, Nadia and Paul Bellerby, I parked my bike outside the restored Melbourne tram that would be my home for the night, found a bottle of good bubbly generously left in the fridge, stripped to my boardies and sat in the cooling water of the infinity pool and drank it while I took in the view from Double Island Point to Noosa Head, turning golden in the late light.
A three-times finalist in the accommodation category of the Sunshine Coast Business Awards, Rosecliffe Cottages this month took out the coveted Land award at the Noosa Biosphere awards gala for following “a key tenet of regenerative farming – working in harmony with the environment”.
Says Nadia: “In our submission to the awards I focused on humans living with nature, how we’ve put up signage for the Noosa Trails Network and now we’re identifying plants along it, giving some history about them.”
There is much to discover and learn right across Rosecliffe’s 37.6 hectares of wildlife sanctuary and conservation preserve, but at its heart is a charming small farm, using regenerative practices, lush paddocks that are home to a small herd of Belted Galloway Cattle (“Our pandas”, says Nadia) plus horses, alpacas, a llama, miniature ponies and chickens.
It’s the perfect kid-friendly hilltop farm-stay, with a beautiful relocated kauri wood homestead, and fabulously eccentric guest accommodations tucked behind screens of trees nearby.
Everything up here has a fascinating story behind it, so let’s start with the owners.
US-born and educated, Nadia came to Queensland in the 1980s to work with the Pacific Whale Foundation, researching the southern migration from a base on Stradbroke Island, which led to seven years focusing on humpbacks for Queensland Parks and Wildlife and the University of Queensland, working on pilot studies at Hervey Bay. Frequently travelling between Brisbane and the Fraser Coast with two young kids, while her then-husband completed a PhD, she stumbled upon Rosecliffe, then just pasture with no dividing fences or road access.
She recalls: “I was just 22, I must have been nuts, but I thought, I can do this!”
By the time Nadia found the kauri cottage at Northgate in Brisbane and worked out how to relocate it, her marriage was over.
On the positive side, the rough access track she’d put in had been upgraded, although not gravelled, but it was enough to enable a bulldozer to haul a prime mover up the mountain carrying half a house each time.
In 1994, when she met musician Paul Bellerby, who was working the resort circuit between the Whitsundays and the Gold Coast, Nadia’s mother had come to stay, so one of his first missions was to buy an unwanted schoolroom at Yandina, bring it up the hill and create a guest accommodation now known as Tree Tops.
Paul fell in love with the property, as well as its owner, and together they stripped back old wood, repainted, cut tracks, planted trees and created beautiful gardens.
Their first venture into farm-stay tourism came about when the Sunshine Coast chapter of Riding For The Disabled came looking for a home.
They stayed for 12 years, with up to 70 riders camping at Rosecliffe for a week at a time. The road was upgraded again, corrals were put in, new tracks made around the perimeter of the property.
Says Nadia: “Then we invited the Noosa Trail Network through the property, which also helped us create purpose-built tracks for the disabled. We didn’t really have a vision for the place as such, it just came together by chance. The Leyland bus is a good example of that.”
Paul and Nadia were out looking for parts for their old ‘63 Bedford at the truck wreckers when they noticed an old bus in terrible condition parked in a corner of the yard.
It was a 1952 Leyland Tiger, one of only four or five in Australia in one piece, according to Paul.
It was a veteran of the Sydney northern beaches run, and it was off to a new and loving home. It started out as a bunkhouse for woofers (volunteer farm workers), but it is now the beautifully restored Rosecliffe Bus Stop, with an adjoining pavilion with claw foot tub, granite-topped kitchen and large deck with pool and ocean views.
The story of the Melbourne tram is equally oddball.
Says Nadia: “Our son saw an ad for the Melbourne tram, asking for submissions for public and community use.”
Paul: “They were basically giving them away, but the submissions would go to a board and they’d select who got them.”
Nadia: “We got the St Kilda. We had two cranes here to lift it off and Paul arranged a giant tow truck to get it up the hill, but the truck driver was a rock star, just drove it straight up the hill, 17 tonnes of it, so we didn’t need the towie.”
From the tram’s guest compendium: “The Melbourne Tram sleeps one couple. It is an historic W Class Tram number 1004 built in 1955 and it ran Melbourne’s iconic Spencer St to St Kilda line until it was retired in 1992. With the assistance and guidance of Bendigo Tramways and the Newport Workshops, this tram has been lovingly restored and is now fitted out in Art Deco 1st class saloon car style with inlaid Art Deco furniture, and overstuffed Victorian brocade couch, brocade upholstered tub chairs, a mahogany butler’s kitchen and a high-backed claw foot bath. The toilet is a trip to the conductor’s front cabin where the folding driver’s seat and wheel remains.”
It is fabulous. My one-night stay was nowhere near enough, I needed more luxuriating in the tram or exploring the beautiful wilds of Rosecliffe.
So I went back.
On a lovely Pinbarren afternoon Paul drove us through a dry creek bed to a picnic space under a giant fig, looking out on Pinbarren and the valley below, one of their favourite spots to contemplate the three decades of hard work they’ve put into this place, and how hard it will be to leave.
Yes, the Bellerbys have put the place on the market, planning a retirement on a remote southern beach.
“But we’ll only sell it as a going concern,” says Nadia.
“So it would have to be to the right people, and that might take a while,” she adds with a hopeful smile.
For bookings or more information on Rosecliffe, visit noosahinterlandcottages.com.au
