You’ll notice it the moment you arrive, crunching into the gravel driveway and pushing open the heavy oak door that acts as the boundary between Ben Huon Manor and the world. There’s a timeless magic to the place – something built into the walls of the house itself, and ignited by decades of love that one family has poured into their passion project.
Back in 1998, James Salmond and his father Mel came across a five-acre piece of land in the historic village of Robertson – a sloping stretch of lawn punctuated by majestic sassafras trees that bloom with star-shaped yellow-green flowers in the springtime. Something about the Southern Highlands area – rolling hills and quaint provincial towns – reminded the family of England, and they set about building the closest thing to Saltburn you’ll find this side of the equator. The result is something truly magical: an otherworldly family home that’s now opened its doors so that guests can experience – if only for a weekend – life in another time.
It's just an hour and a half's drive from Sydney, but a stay here is a sepia-toned escape from reality – a time capsule in a magical corner of NSW where the rules of modern life don’t apply.
The interior fit-out is the lovechild of James Salmond and his wife Sandie, who share an affinity for Georgian-era design, and the ability to bring a vision to life. Along with his father and a team of builders, James built the sprawling, five-bedroom manor from the ground up based on his and Sandie’s designs, with painstaking attention paid to every detail.
“My dad and I must have spent 500 hours on the staircase alone, but it’s important – you can’t build a house like this without loving it, because it’s so much more than a building, it’s an art piece too,” Salmond explains, as we sit around the island in the duck-egg blue kitchen.
As an antiques dealer and cabinet maker by trade, Salmond’s appreciation for craftsmanship is infinite: a meticulous eye for beauty that he imbues into every corner. The artwork that adorns the walls has been collected over decades – a portrait by a royal painter, a reclaimed church pulpit reimagined to flank a fireplace – and ornate stone finials from the University of Sydney are dotted throughout the immaculate grounds. In the mornings, shadows of the trees dance across the sandstone, and dappled sunlight pours into the sitting room through floor-to-ceiling windows onto deep green leather armchairs and heavy oak tables. It’s Salmond’s taste that makes this house so much more than a tribute to the time gone by – the house itself may only be a couple of decades old, but everything housed within its walls aches with history. From the low-ceilinged kitchen to the hidden drawing room lined with old, amber-paged books – there’s a transporting charm brought to life by the precious things that call Ben Huon home.
And while it’s visually akin to an English country pile, unlike Saltburn, the family story here is one of love and dedication – and it’s even more spellbindingly beautiful than Rosamund Pyke’s performance and Barry Keoghan’s bum. It’s not my story to tell, but I’d recommend booking a stay here to find it out for yourself – stories like this are better told in person. What I can tell you, is that a weekend at Ben Huon will stay with you long after you’ve left.
“I like to make it special for people, it’s not just a normal Airbnb – I want people to feel like they’ve stepped across a timezone,” James tells me.
On the Saturday afternoon, as we got slowly tipsy gathered in a sun-soaked circle on the lawn, James busied himself in the kitchen – wood-fired oven roaring and soft jazz spilling out of the windows. That evening, we sat down to a four-course dinner presented by Matilda and Tim – who introduced themselves as our “butlers” for the evening. As a trained chef – he met his wife at cooking school back in 1980 – James is ridiculously adept on the pans. We ate creamy scallops doused in a sage butter halo, rib-eye steak with a rich red wine jus, pear and ginger sorbet that I wanted to scoop into my mouth with a shovel, and a rhubarb, apricot and apple tart that my friend accurately proclaimed was “f***ing perfect”.
After dinner, Tim and Matilda brought us tea by the fire and we sprawled out on the sofas – with perhaps just a little less decorum than the great and the good would have done back in the 1800s.
While you won’t officially step back in time, it’s hard to believe that life as we know it is still carrying on beyond Ben Huon’s sandstone walls. It's just an hour and a half's drive from Sydney, but a stay here is a sepia-toned escape from reality – a time capsule in a magical corner of NSW where the rules of modern life don’t apply.
You can learn more and book over here.
Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out Sydney newsletter for more news, food & drink inspo and activity ideas, straight to your inbox.