Is there a great sense of community? 

Most definitely. The friendships we have forged are solid. To be accepted into a community in the middle of tough times is pretty amazing. We arrived in Murrurundi just as the drought was ramping up. As the situation got worse, Murrurundi got busy. We were witness to incredible community spirit. Locals formed groups organising tankers of water, trucks of food and necessities for those on the land and in the community struggling to make ends meet. And it wasn’t just a one off, week after week, month after month people donated time, money and goods to ensure that their neighbours made it through. There were families here doing it very tough and seeing the giant heart of this tiny town was truly inspiring.

The generosity and sense of community doesn’t end there; we thought that starting a new business in a new town where we knew very few people was bound to be tough. But as far as community goes, we couldn’t have been more wrong. We”ve been fumbling our way through managing a small property, launching a business, renovating the sheds for our cellar door, all while trying to establish ourselves here. The guidance and generosity of local knowledge is abundant. People offer to help in any way they can; everyone knows someone who can fix whatever it is that needs fixing, people go that extra mile. We have the most incredible neighbours and friends looking out for us. The community of Murrurundi champions each other, people genuinely want the town to thrive and in so doing, do what they can to help each other succeed.

Why did you decide to start a distillery? 

We both felt an inkling to build something when we moved to Murrurundi and our property gave us the potential to establish a new business. We had taken a trip to Scotland and visited the Speyside distilleries both large and the small. Maybe we fell in love with romance of running a distillery, but the idea irresistibly moved from a concept to reality over three years. Distilling is an amalgam of aesthetics and process, and we are both able to bring our differing skills and ideas to these seemingly incongruous requirements. It was all validating when we won medals in our first year of operation for our gin at the Australian Gin Awards.

What are you trying to achieve? 

Geoff and I are striving to create a business that is ecologically sustainable; From our packaging which is all 100 per cent recyclable, our composting of spent ingredients back into our gardens, our enviro-cycle recycling waste water system to our use of solar power and rain water to physically drive our business. Our aim is to grow a business with as small a carbon footprint as humanly possible while still creating delicious and exciting products.

When we first moved into the house and decided to create the distillery, we immediately installed solar panels which generate enough power to run our own power plant, we installed more water tanks to quadruple our water collection and storage capacity and all of our by-products and waste water are composted and go back into the ground and the garden which is now home to many of the ingredients we grow to flavour our gin.

How has living in the country influenced you? 

As far as our business goes, we are doing things now we thought we would never do growing and foraging our own produce and using other local produce to create locally influenced flavours in our gin.

And on a personal level, it has changed our very existence. We now have the physical and metaphorical space and freedom to be creative, we can take our time to think about our next steps and we have the support of the community driving us forward. We have the time and space to breathe.

We have also developed a resilience that can only come from spending time in the country; learning a new, self-reliant way of existing, letting go city life and embracing dodgy internet, power outages, and what to do when the water pump packs it in.  Country life has it challenges, that’s for sure; there is nothing like dodging black snakes whilst lawn mowing to focus the mind. And I have come to appreciate my grandfather’s adage, “there is nothing baling twine or fencing wire can’t fix!”

What do you love about living in the country? 

Our view it’s pretty spectacular. And the veggie garden, digging in the dirt brings me no end of joy. We like being able to walk into town and greet people by name, that feeling of belonging somewhere not being just another face in the crowd.

I love that I can invite my new friends over for an afternoon drink and they stay until midnight and we all have tear stained cheeks from hours of raucous laughter that’s the best.

For more information, visit magpiedistilling.com.au or @magpiedistilling

We talk about a time for an interview early in the week. “Try me but I could be out of range,” emails Colin Selwood. For this chef certainly won’t be on the pans in the kitchen at his Scone restaurant The Cottage on his days off. The 57-year-old loves nothing better than to get up at 4am to make a quick cup of tea before heading out into the high country surrounding this picturesque Upper Hunter Valley town. “I walk the hills a lot because I’m a deer hunter. Most Mondays I can walk up to 12 kilometres,” he explains.

A childhood spent around the lush farming land near Rangiora in New Zealand’s South Island left Colin with a deep love of the land. “My mum had grown up on a farm and I spent as much time as I could at a friend’s property. I just loved it.”

Ask him today what he likes about living in the country and the answer is simple. “Being able to park right outside the shop I want to go to, never hearing a car horn toot in frustration and seeing the stars at night,” he says. “I like just simply having paddocks all around us.”

When Colin arrived in Sydney in 1986 and landed a job at the Bayswater Brasserie, he had no intentions of staying permanently — or even the remotest idea that one day he would end up in the Australian bush. His first lengthy stint was in 2010 when he moved from Sydney to Willowtree, a small town on the Liverpool Plains, where he set up a restaurant called Graze specialising in dry-aged beef. A move back to the city, this time Melbourne, followed in 2013 but he and his wife Tammy were keen to return so jumped at the chance to launch another restaurant: this time The Cottage in Scone.

“I wanted my son to grow up in the country, doing the things I did, riding motor bikes, swimming in rivers, shooting rabbits, camping out and sailing on fresh water,” he says of his now 11-year-old son Jackson.

Skirted by wide verandahs and set back from the street, the restaurant is housed in an 1860s building that has had several reinventions over the years. Private hospital, guest house and finally the office for the Pastoral Lands Board before it was finally bought by Michael and Shanny Crouch of Waverley Station in 2012.

Today, the building has been restored with interiors by well-known Melbourne-based interior designer Adelaide Bragg who grew up in the area. The result is an elegant space hung with a large landscape by painter Lucy Vader, who often works from her studio on the Liverpool Plains, and still-life works by Catherine Hickson.

Running a restaurant in a regional town is not without its challenges. “We had two great years and then it stopped raining. When disposable income and edible grass dries up, a business like ours slows right down. People either stop going out or taking cheaper options, especially if they are buying feed for their stock,” he explains.

But Colin’s love for the community inspired him even during those tough times. Just take one of his favourite customers, the late Betty Shepherd. The octogenarian, who was Australia’s first registered female horse trainer and also the first woman to have a runner in both the Caulfield and Melbourne cups, was a regular at The Cottage and never strayed too far from her first loves: oysters, fillet steak, French Champagne and chocolate.

And it’s locals like Betty that have made all the difference. “As chefs we are highly criticised — everyone thinks that they are a food critic. One of the things here that is wonderful for me after 30 years of cooking, is that I have moved to an area in the country that really had a bit of a void for a nice restaurant, so a lot of our customers really have been far more grateful than a wannabe food critic. Which is so good for my headspace and mental health.”

The Cottage, 196 Kelly Street, Scone NSW. Telephone (02) 6545 1215.

For more information, head to thecottagescone.com or @thecottagescone

Colin’s Address Book

Great local producers plus things to do in the region.

Arc-en-Ciel Trout Farm. Visit and buy an array of smoked goods, but this Nundle trout farm is also home to The Drunken Trout Cafè©. Open for lunch on Sundays and bookings are essential. Telephone (02) 6769 3665. Malonga, 52 Shearers Road, Hanging Rock NSW.  rainbowtrout.com.au

Manning Valley Naturally Beef. Colin uses this award-winning grass-fed beef. “Our beef comes from Wingham which is relatively local and we have a few local farmers that send cattle that way and they do end up with their product in our dry-aging room, so that’s a big bonus for us.” Telephone (02) 8918 0000.

Reedy Creek Crays. Colin sources premium size table yabbies from this farm. reedycreekcrays.com.au

Jason Mowen waited until he was 45 to buy his first house. But this interior designer’s choice of a weatherboard cottage in the country four-and-half-hours north of Sydney was a surprise to many. “My friends thought I was crazy, but the more people told me not to do it, the more determined I became,” Jason says today, sitting in his elegant book-lined living room in Murrurundi, a NSW town famous for the thoroughbred studs dotted throughout the area.

The horse connection is an important one in this story. Based in Sydney’s inner-city Darlinghurst for a decade, Jason is the first to admit that on the surface his decision to opt for rural life was a surprising one, until you learn he grew up on a property in the rolling green hills around Maleny in Queensland.

“My mother and grandfather used to breed racehorses and I remember her speaking of Murrurundi when I was a kid. Then I went to university in Armidale in the early 90s and I always remembered this quaint little town with the long name that I used to drive through on my way to Sydney,” he explains.

“I drove through again in late 2015 and just fell in love with the place. It felt unspoiled: it wasn’t gentrified nor ruined with bad development. It was also really affordable and I loved that no-one back in Sydney had heard of it.”

On top of Jason’s lists of requirements was a place where his mother Jicky would also be happy to spend time. This meant any prospective new home needed to be in an area where this accomplished horsewoman’s beloved horses could be nearby — four of them are now on agistment in a nearby paddock — and so the search for a house began. Luckily, Jason was prepared to be patient because it was nearly a year before the right one came along.

“I was looking at both homes and land and after enquiring about another house, the local agent, Dave Bettington, told me: ‘Forget that one — have I got the house for you. Not on the market yet, but it’s perfect.” It took a while but 10 months later I was the proud owner of a largish cottage on an acre-and-a-half at the northern edge of town.”

Walking around the garden on a late afternoon, it’s easy to understand why, even though he had not originally planned to live in the property full time, Jason soon began to find it harder and harder to leave this quiet sanctuary with its abandoned tennis court and majestic pine trees soaring into the sky.

“In late 2019, I decided to give up the apartment I”d been renting for 10 years in Darlinghurst and move to the home I loved, and owned, in Murrurundi, as I felt I could do much of my work remotely,” he explains.

Built in 1905, the house is called Dovecot — a name Jason was originally puzzled by until he learnt more about its past. “There is no actual dovecot [a structure for housing doves or pigeons] so I couldn’t understand why it had been named that until I discovered it was built by a man named George Dove — so, house of the Dove — which I absolutely love. I bought the house from his granddaughter, Judy, who was born and lived all her life here. It has a really good energy. Judy was a lovely person, greatly esteemed in Murrurundi, and there was obviously a lot of love in this house over the years.”

Jason is gradually learning more and more about the history of Dovecot — just as he is with his holiday home in Italy. “Dovecot was my first house and then, just a few years later, I decided to buy a holiday place in Europe,” says Jason. After discovering how successfully he can work remotely from Murrurundi, he is hoping to spend three months a year at his second le casa — one half of a rustic palazzo dating back to 1580 — in Matino in Puglia.

“I see my life in the future, once things get back to normal, as living between Matino and Murrurundi. I”ve always been a bit of a gypsy and usually spend five to seven years in a place before moving on but I do love Murrurundi. It allows you to be quieter, which is great for inspiring both creativity and contentment. And being surrounded by such great beauty — the beauty of this wonderful old home and garden and the surrounding natural beauty of the mountains and landscape — I”ve lived all over the world and it just doesn’t get better than that.”

Jason’s Address Book

Five things I love to do in Murrurundi – and not in any particular order – are:

1. Lunch in the garden at Michael Reid’s gallery. “I love taking people there for lunch. The buildings, the ambience and the people – I love being there. Favourite thing on the menu? The pies are great.” Corner Boyd and Mayne streets, Murrurundi NSW. Telephone: (02) 6546 6767

2. A walk to Paradise Park. “If you walk up the hill and through these massive granite boulders and a crack in the cliff you will get a wonderful view of the town. It’s called the Eye of the Needle.”

3. Wander the town and admire the old colonial cottages and buildings dotted along the streets. “I’m always imagining what I”d do to them if they were mine!”

There’s a sign leaning against a weathered white wall on the deck of a small workers” cottage in the town of Murrurundi in NSW’s Upper Hunter. It’s a little faded after a few years in the sun and some of the words have almost disappeared but as I lean in a little closer, I can just make them out. ‘Life is too short to be serious all the time”.

Jean-Paul Bell, one of Australia’s best known mime artists, has shaped his life around this sentiment so it’s no surprise to discover the other quirky installations dotted around this block on one of Murrurundi’s side streets. The first, a nameplate ‘Whimsy” greets you at the front door. “I called it that because to me it is such a storybook cottage. Perhaps it’s because of my mother’s English background, but I”ve always had a bit of a panache for little cottages with white picket fences,” he explains with a wry smile. “I think moving around a lot as a kid, and we lived in a lot of different houses, gave me a great love of architecture and this is a classic workers” cottage.”

The 69-year-old first came to Murrurundi in the early 1980s. “I was on my way to Tamworth to do some shows and thought I would stay within striking distance,” explains the man who helped establish Clown Doctors, a group of performers dedicated to visiting hospitals, in 1997. “So I trundled into Murrurundi and stayed at the White Hart Hotel. It was very cheap, something like $14 a night. I checked in and then I wandered around town. I thought, I like this place.”

In fact, this grandfather of five – “they range in age from three to 22, it’s wonderful” – liked it so much that Murrurundi quickly became a regular stop on his trips up and down the New England Highway. But it was to take nearly four decades before Jean-Paul finally became a local when he bought the house in April 2014. “I was just in love with it. It took me six months to lift my head to look at the ranges outside the back door and then I thought, god if you were a painter, you would love to live in this town.”

After living in Sydney’s Northern Beaches and Newcastle for many years, Jean-Paul’s decision to move to the country perplexed some but he was no stranger to rural life. As a 14-year-old living in another little country town, St Andrews in Victoria, he had decided to become a performer.

“We had the most peripatetic existence when I was growing up. My father was mainly a travelling salesman and we moved 117 times – my siblings and I counted them up one night as most of us couldn’t remember them all. I went to 20 different primary schools and seven high schools. But I loved St Andrews, it was a fantastic little town, and I joined the local arts association there which eventually led me into theatre.”

Jean-Paul’s work has taken him around the world to some unusual places — two trips were even the subject of documentaries Honeymoon to Kabul in 2009 and Stumbling in Hillary’s Footsteps in 2013 — but the community spirit of this little town has captured his heart.

“I’m the most gypsy like person and I love to go travelling in my little van. I’m lucky to have the most wonderful – and zealous – neighbour, Neil. Anyone comes near the house, I get a report. He’s a former bus driver who doesn’t want to go anywhere, anymore. It’s a great community here which is nice, you just wouldn’t get this in the city.”

Jean-Paul’s Address Book

1. White Hart Hotel. The place Jean-Paul stayed on his first visit to Murrurundi. 46 Mayne Street, Murrurundi NSW. Telephone: (02) 6546 6242. whiteharthotel.com.au

2. Paradise Park. “The walk I love to do, and it takes about two hours, is to Paradise Park. A walk through The Eye Of The Needle also gives you a great view over town.”

3. Passed On. A second-hand shop run by Jean-Paul and friend Dorothy Cleary. “I wanted to call it Dead People’s Stuff after a shop I”d seen in Canada but she thought it was a bit too much.” 52 Mayne Street, Murrurundi NSW.