Ridgydidge in the Henley Ridge Estate is the name of a unique family lifestyle home on a useful productive acreage at Markwood in the Ovens Valley just to the east of Milawa and a twenty minute drive from Wangaratta.
The property is listed for private sale by Elders Real Estate in Wangaratta with an asking price of $925,000.
Located at 50 Illawong Road at Marwood the 5.77 hectare (or 14.25 acre) property in the Henley Estate, was developed from an original farm holding that was owned by one of the first wine grape growing families in the north east region.
On the property is a spectacular, high quality mud brick family home that has an area under roof of 408 square metres with expansive views of the Ovens valley and the Beechworth hills.
With an impressive presentation it is light filled and with three bedrooms plus a study, home office, or even a nursery, and with two and a half bathrooms the home has many striking features. There's also space for a sunroom plus a separate billiards table, with an inground pool set in a protected courtyard.
The features include a large undercover alfresco area with its own barbecue and pizza oven, to an underground cellar which the vendors use to brew their own beer, to make a few annual bottles of wine, and as a store for their home grown vegetable produce. Brick lined, it has the bulk of the home concrete slab over it, so the temperature is ideal and very consistent. It has access by ladder beneath a concealed trap door in one of the central living rooms.
There are also highly efficient services including a 3kW capable solar panel assembly with a solar hot water service on the rooftop, with room to add more capacity if required, plus extensive rainwater collection into multiple storage tanks.
Heating comes from combustion stoves, hydronic panels, and underfloor electric heating with cooling by an evaporative system while the vendors say they designed these services for self-sufficiency, and they rarely have any energy bills.
The home is set in an expansive and established garden area of about two acres surrounding the home which of course includes productive vegetable plots and orchard, with a reticulated watering system sourced from a reliable dam in one of the four paddocks.
The vendors, who are in their retirement years, are selling to return to be closer to family members on the NSW coastline. They report they bought the property and the incomplete mud brick home in 2001 and the have worked over their ownership to not only complete the construction, but to present it to the standard they sought and to be an ideal easy to run family home.
Their works have included refreshing all the mud brick surfaces and adding extra windows so that it commands the district ambiance of the north east, to be both energy efficient and extremely comfortable.
The small acreage has enabled them to run their registered Ridgydidge Dorper Sheep Stud so the four main paddocks and the on property buildings are exactly set up for this and their flock of about thirty five sheep and their lambs. There are small lambing paddocks and facilities and paddock shelters that could be used for almost any other small animal enterprise. The fencing throughout is ideally fit for this purpose.
The farm shedding includes a three bay enclosed machinery shed of nine metres by seven point three metres to house a caravan, boat, or machinery with an internal clearance to suit. There is an attached workshop and storage with a combined area of fifteen point six metres by six metres plus an additional tractor shelter all under roof and sufficient for any enterprise. Single phase power is connected with three phase available.
The property with its own bitumen road frontage is only a few hundred metres off the popular Snow Road, so access to multiple local towns and villages and a myriad of services is ideal.
Elders Real Estate in Wangaratta say that the Ridgydidge property at Markwood is a very smart lifestyle opportunity for a couple or family.
"Their work over the last twenty years provides an established family home with a very impressive presentation and I doubt if there would be a better mud brick home anywhere in Victoria.
"They are now retiring so their Ridgydidge holding is presented for new owners to enjoy a productive, highly efficient and desirable lifestyle, in an ideal accessible rural environment at Markwood, with Milawa in particular, only a few kilometres away".
For more information on 50 Illawong road in the Henley Estate at Markwood contact
Elders real Estate in Wangaratta and their selling agents Michael Everard on 0408 653 161 or Sally Wilson 0437 198 751
