Stanton Bed & Breakfast

July is midwinter at Stanton and with it comes not snow and some sort of damp purgatory, but enticing crisp clear mornings brought about after the sun has finished burning off the fog.

The trees tell you it is winter though and the fires are going day and night, the tell tale spirals of smoke from chimneys, and the art work that goes into stacking firewood.

Firewood is never just stacked, it is sculpted, particularly in Maydena.

Winter has the most blissful pasttime to be enjoyed by all. Sleeping. The uninterrupted, sound sleeping to be done in a warm doona-laden bed is just magic, particularly if it is windy and raining outside. If sleep does not come easy then try an old house in winter.

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It is with sadness that I announce to everyone who has stayed at Stanton the recent death of Sam the one-eyed sheepdog.

Sam was a working sheepdog at Stanton all his life (16 years) and his life here was not all that pleasant until Helen (the other Stanton legend) came along and brought him in from the cold. These two were inseparable and if they can be together now I would wish it be so.

Sam had the sort of personality many adult humans only aspire to and he will be sadly missed, but he is still here at Stanton under the potato vine near the house.

How many guests have taken photographs of Sam is not known, but I am glad you did this and keep them with my warmest regards. If you have one of Sam and wish to share it with us all then please add it to the Stanton web site

Goodbye Sam and thank you.

It is cold. Snow is on the hills down to the 600 metre level and fog wraps itself around hollow and contour alike.

Sometimes the cold fog just gives it to you, nature in the face, take it or leave it. This is winter doing what it does best.

Winter in Tasmania is about looks. The look tells you what you may be in for and what you will get if it does become real. The night, before it snows seems warmer than the day before, mist swirling close to the ground telling all what is going to happen on the morrow.

Weather in Tasmania is different than that on the North Island. It is a constantly changing entity season by season, day by day, guiding a way of life and such a life is spent observing weather that changes hour by hour.

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Curiously May arrives at Stanton’s door looking a lot like spring, only drier. Many of Spring’s jobs can be attempted now and two of these on the Stanton work calendar have been done on time. The chicken shed is still a construction site but developing slowly.

The orchard has been pruned the stems now bare and prickly like a school boys haircut. The resultant prunings collected, heaped and burnt in a larger field fire adding to a simple yet exhilirating country pleasure, that of the open air, cold night bonfire under the stars.

May at Stanton starts always with an illumination of the pine trees on the first day of May. Each year a bonfire worthy into a Lord of the Rings script is constructed and lit to highlight a certain person’s pagan birthday inclinations and to bring friends together with a red wine in a rural atmosphere.
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Autumn at Stanton seems to start when the clocks go back to their right time and then the light changes again to more sombre shades. It is still dark when shift workers start the 7am shift.

Stanton does not have to do the early starts anymore, it can wait for another hour. The clouds now try and do the grey linen look but Autumn is a magic time of the year at Stanton … things are changing.

There is a discreet tussle between wanting to stay indoors a little longer or choosing to venture forth to the golden hues outside. Mind and body are active now.
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March at Stanton is quiet, warm and moving slowly along a known path. the weeks between the hot month of February and the cooling Autumn of April go quickly without much to report.

Grass is growing prolifically everywhere and most things around the house have a green tinge it seems. Sam’s bones do as well, the one or two he remembers and thus finds while on a tour of the garden go down a treat.

Growing new grass, dead heading roses, and planting bulbs are the jobs to do but the main activity at Stanton is doing nothing at all for the time being as winter has been thought about already.
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February at Stanton is hot with drying winds coming from the North West. The ground is dry and brown though the black faced sheep standing in the field on every early morn appreciate the dewey coolness. later they seem to sit and talk under the low Macrocarpa boughs blending in with the shadows- Stantons silent sentinels.

Sam is under the potato vine doing the same thing. he lost his eye to sun cancer and he is not a silly pooch. Pete must be having a day off but I seem to hear him telling me to go to the orchard and pick up the fallen fruit so the orchard is hygenic. he would probably tell me to water the trees deeply, if he were here so I will do the right thing. The apple trees flourish as a green belt in an ocean of khaki and it is easy to be drawn towards the trees as a sort of curious fruit squeezer(nectarines beware)

Stanton has a goodly variety of apples by the way. the problem is no one here knows much about the subject so a bucket of assorteds went to the coffee shop for some local opinions. We at Stanton have been Baristas at the local coffee shop for years now and do we know our beans… but not our apples it seems.
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It is mid-January at Stanton and a pleasant 25 degrees . at 11:30am. A slight breeze is rustling the trees and nothing much is moving apart from dozens of butterflies zipping around the post and rail fence a few metres from the house. Occasionally a duck splashes on the bottom dam but it is only hal way interested in swimming today.

Sam is asleep under his potato vine bush while his former life interest — black-faced sheep hunker down under a huge Macrocarpa tree, but this is not Footrot Flats. Even the local tiger snake is not interested in playing. It is not preciously hot and curiously the sun does beckon one to venture forth from the shade, fronds from the willow slapping at face and ears urging a quicker departure.

The only sounds heard are a tractor cutting grass in a nearby paddock and birdsong coming from the Macrocarpa line not in opposition to each other, just there. The roses are out and so are the dandelions.
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I have a sad duty to perform and that is to announce to our old and not yet met friends around the world the recent death of Helen at her beloved Stanton. The breast cancer she was diagnosed with three years ago took her away and she will be missed by us all.

The house that awoke to the sound of Helen’s joyousness watched quietly as she passed into history and is not sad.

Stanton knows about time as she is one of the oldest Europeans in Australia but she thinks differently to you and I.

She has seen the laying out of life here to a daily routine, patiently and probably curiously musing over the juggling of time by convicts and modernists alike.

For nearly 200 years Stanton has watched the schedule of the earth, and strengthened the life of the spirit around her. The Stanton seasons will become a regular feature of the website as she deserves to be heard.

Often and again, through God’s grace,
Man and woman usher a child
Into the world and clothe him in gay colours;
They cherish him, and teach him as the seasons turn
Until his young bones strengthen,
His limbs lengthen …

The Fortunes of Men

By dint of its 188 years, the walls of Stanton have many stories to tell, the most dramatic probably concerning the day in 1843 when bushranger Martin Cash and friends arrived, held 16 people at gunpoint in the drawing room, relieved the house of its valuables, charmed the ladies present, and galloped off into the hills behind the house, where his hideout, ‘Cash’s Cave’ exists to this day.

We are fortunate in that the house has survived bushfires, storms, neglect and most damaging of all perhaps, ‘modernisation’, and hence retains its original simplicity and charm.

Stanton has 3 bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. The living room, dining room, extensive library, sun room, verandahs, spa house, licensed cellar, barbeque, gardens and orchards are all available to house guests.

The normal comforts of home are all here – electric heating, tea and coffee making, bar fridge, electric blanket, hair dryer, television, DVD, stereo, but also the things you go on holidays for – beautiful rooms filled with antique furniture, open fires, fresh flowers, wonderful breakfast served on lace clothes and Wedgwood china, silverware and crystal, (but most importantly, cooked by someone else and with no washing up), and all the time in the world to enjoy the pervading peace and tranquility of a time past (without the bushrangers!)