Sharon Webb

QUAMBY ESTATE in its parklike setting on Westwood Road Hagley is on the market and set for yet another iteration of its so far fabulous life.

The home, with its 2.5km tree-lined driveway, 64 hectares and nine hole golf course, is for sale world-wide. Agents Knight Frank are expecting a Tasmanian property record.

A woman who lived on the estate 30 years ago said, ‘It’s a wonderful experience to live at Quamby. You become part of its story.’

The American Colonial-style home was the flamboyant base for northern entertaining by the first Tasmanian born premier Sir Richard Dry and his impeccable hostess wife, Lady Clara Meredith Dry.

As well as entertaining dignitaries, Heritage Tasmania records Dry, who owned nearly 5000 hectares, as ‘a beneficent feudal lord’, hosting Christmas dinner and Quamby festivities for his many tenant farmers. He gave land worth £400 to build St Mary’s Anglican Church and rectory at Hagley.

Dry also commissioned the building of the school now known as Hagley Farm School for his tenants’ children’s education.

When Sir Richard died in office in 1869 aged 54, his wife, 13 years younger, moved to England, selling to Victorian grazier JJ Phelps.

Sir Richard was buried at St Mary’s in Hagley.

Later, Quamby was home for the Gregory family, then postwar for the Barnett family who revived its glory, and more recently it became a golf and country club.

In its earlier and later lives, Quamby was a byword for beauty and luxury, with white marble for the drawing room fireplace and black marble for the dining room. But not always.

The land was originally granted to Irish political convict Richard Dry, for services to Tasmania’s colonial government.

He built the first stage of Quamby, originally called Belle Vue, leaving his son Sir Richard to build the second and more glamorous stage from 1838 to 1843.

Over many years after Lady Clara sold it, the building went into decline, until post WWII Mark Barnett’s parents, John and Sallie (later Lady Ferrall) bought it and started renovating in 1955.

‘It was a serious wreck’, said Mark, who now lives at Westbury. ‘I was born there while it was being restored and I believe many local people asked, ‘When are you bringing in the bulldozers?’

‘I have an early memory of being in a cot in the dining room, looking up and seeing the sky.’

Mark said that Richard Dry senior, who lived at Elphin Farm in Launceston rather than Quamby, worked in Tasmania’s treasury and was one of six key people who set up the colony.

‘He was granted 81 hectares, the largest Tasmanian landholder at the time. His position meant he knew the best land locations. But he died before Quamby was finished.

‘His son Richard, being Tasmania’s seventh premier, needed entertainment rooms so he built the flagstone verandah and the entrance hall to welcome dignitaries, the dining room and the drawing room.’

Mark’s memories of growing up include playing cricket with brothers Simon, Nicholas and Guy in Quamby’s vast hallway, the length of a cricket pitch.

‘I have a 1970s memory, when I was 10 or 11. My parents held a National Trust open house. People were lined up down the driveway in the rain.

‘I was in the kitchen listening to visitors saying, ‘Oooh, people actually live here!’

‘Soon after that, it dawned on me that I was privileged to be living at Quamby.’