MULBERRY Vale Homestead has existed since before the foundation of Broken Hill, when it was an outpost between Menindee and Silverton, according to landholder Pamela Wright.
The property’s history has been preserved by Ms Wright, who has spent more than 30 years turning the homestead from a simple stone house into a multi-faceted space that offers accommodation, an events venue, hidden gardens and a saloon-style dining room.
“The original house was from 1882,” she said.
“And Rasp came out to Broken Hill in 1883, so it was here before Broken Hill was really.”
Ms Wright came out here with her young family in 1987 and lived in a miners cottage in town while her husband, a civil engineer, spent three years installing the decline in the mine.
“He was heading to Iran, and I wanted to stay,” she said.
“So I advertised asking if anybody had a property sale, I said I’d look at anything.
“And this lady rang and said yes, I’ve got a little place a few miles out of town. I thought that sounds interesting.”
Ms Wright, a keen horse rider, found the property appealing due to it being a freehold amidst the common surrounding Broken Hill, and the expansive land around the house meant she could keep and ride horses.
“When I got here I just thought, yes, this is it,” she said.
“It was just a feeling. You can ride for miles.”
Ms Wright grew up in Mount Eliza on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, but had lived in London and Tasmania previously, but said Broken Hill was the best place to ride due to the lack of rainy weather and vast outback stretches.
She’d ridden horses since she was a child.
“My mother was a dancing teacher,” she said. “And she had a dancing school, but I preferred ponies and climbing trees.”
After graduating from school in Victoria, Ms Wright moved to London, where she worked in a photography and design studio, in advertising.
She said her experience in the studio learning to make things and use tools was invaluable to helping her build things at Mulberry Vale.
“I sort of was building sets, and I got a bit of an eye for setting up things and learning how to use tools and make things.”
Upon moving to Mulberry Vale, which looks out over the outback plains on the road to Menindee, Ms Wright thought perhaps tourists might want to stay at the property.
“When tourists come to town they want a kind of outback experience,” she said.
“So there wasn’t really anything and I thought I’ll build a couple of little cabins.”
She said the cabins were instantly popular, and sharing stories with her guests inspired her to build a communal space for guests.
“We needed somewhere to have a bit of a get together,” she said.
“So I sort of got the gallery built. I had a premade shed you can buy, the basic structure, brought out, and then I added things from salvage yards and things.”
Ms Wright said most things she installed were re-purposed.
“The front doors on the gallery are from the local nursing home,” she said.
“It’s all about using local stuff.”
Over the years she’s hosted many visitors from throughout Australia and the world, as well as production crews for films like Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Mad Max Fury Road and Furiosa.
“They came out and filmed some things and spent time here,” she said.
Sydney’s Methodist Ladies College even took over for three months per year for twenty years, when year 9 students would spend a term living on the property and learning about the outback.
Ms Wright said a highlight for her was when indigenous elders flew in to stay at the property from throughout Australia, to work on rewriting the constitution to recognize Indigenous people in 2012.
“In the evenings we had the fire raging because it was in the winter and people played the guitar. They just loved it,” she said.
Ms Wright said she never finds herself getting lonely.
“If I feel like talking to anybody I just wander up and sit with the people staying in the cabins or people visiting. But I’m totally happy to just have my own stuff going on.”
She said she has no plans to leave and couldn’t imagine living in a suburban house again.
Even after 34 years at Mulberry Vale, she said she’s still excited to host new guests and meet new people.
“It’s been an adventure really,” she said. “You’re meeting all these people and you realise that everybody has got a story to tell.”
