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.

Stanton is more of a drowser than a full blown sleeper; a nodder in a leather chair; a nana napper by choice not quite a watchful sentry more of a curious aged guardian. Just watching.

You can tell the character of an old house by the way it wakes up with people. Here in 2010 the house is still not weary from sending visitors and workers alike off to toil somewhere, that is her life at the Back River.

She will certainly not send you fleeing during the night either as she is at peace with the people who have lived and died within her walls.

Thomas Shone died at Stanton in 1862, 73 years after being christened at Stanton-on-Hine Heath, Shropshire, England. He gave the farm its name Stanton . His wife Susannah Westlake died at Stanton in 1882.

Thomas Allen Shone died on the farm in 1913. Eliza Cockerill, his wife died in 1920 also at the house. So did her sons Thomas Henry Shone (1891), Henric Stanton Shone (1956), Albert Charles Shone (1881).

More recently, Helen McDiarmid (2009), and Sam Stanton (sheepdog. Rtd, 2010).

The Stanton work calendar was suspended for a few days in July so that time off could be arranged and then enjoyed. Where would be the perfect place to rest up and recharge? Not the warm hills of a tropical island.

No, not at all! Cradle mountain is the answer, of course.

They have log fires, mist, rain and snow — nature at its best. A bit like Stanton.

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.

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.

Call it instinct but it is more likely to be knowledge gained from observing the environment.

Everyone participates in this great community activity and it is surprising how good you can get at it, schoolchildren do it in Tasmania to perfection.

Stanton guests have been known to embrace weather predicting in the morning with a passion and mused over their success upon returning later that evening.

June at Stanton is the Hawthorn tree. Hawthorn trees are sturdy, defiant, hard, and absolutely gorgeous. A kindred spirit with the Irish nationals who gave their love to a new land?

A stretch perhaps but these trees are everywhere in the Derwent Valley and the Southern Highlands, and if Tasmania’s famous Irish political prisoners were to come back they would be engaged in chatting about the frost and the Hawthorns.

Stanton’s Hawthorns are on the National Register. The house by now is probably comfortable with their changing moods; green in summer, red berries in Autumn, cold bare limbs in winter, and white blossoms in Spring.

Companions who are going to be around for a long time fit with the Stanton ethos; Hawthorns are here to stay.

June is the working month at Stanton. Each year our cabinet maker, Nathan Stewart applies his craft and adds to the built environment so continuing a seasonal programme that goes back a bit now.

His most recent achievement is the building of a door, not an ordinary door but something that allows the world to enter Stanton, keeping things out is not what Stanton does best.

Motivation is high at Stanton during June despite winter setting in and early evening feeling like the middle of the night. A trip through Bushy Park to Maydena and the South West is a must but it will not be happening early and definitely will not be fast and furious.

Rain is not likely to be your companion in June, bidding you keep head down in a huddle of concentration. More likely the fine cold air will lift your eyes to view beautiful snow-tipped mountains and so make a day out longer than intended.

Coming home to Stanton and its log fires will compensate for extra time outside.

Winter in Tasmania is always bracing, invigorating , and definitely illuminating.

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.

Stanton knows the smell of woodsmoke in the air. Her seven chimneys twitch when sensing the new outdoor smell; an arousing mixture of smoke and fog carrying sounds of joyous conversation around the house

Some souls just stand and stare at the embers or the dancing flames alone with their thoughts: convicts would have done the same 200 years ago on May Day in this remote outpost of Georgian England.

They were creating a new life at Stanton, now we are maintaining and cultivating an existing life here with friends and guests.

Pruning of roses is a practical endeavour in May and the Stanton roses are the essence of the place. Trimming and shaping them is a cheerful job albeit a painful one at times plans are afootnow to order new Hybrid tea and Floribunda varieties with a view to planting a new rose garden overlooking the vegie patch and the chook house (called ‘Stanton Ovation’).

Corby grubs and aphids are noticeable around the house and will be the focus of a campaign to make them uncomfortable.

A start is to be made with plenty of detergent and water plus vegie oil, water and a hard working blender. If Peter Cundall were here he would be in “garden Army” mode just hearing about it all.

A new line of Tasmanian blue gums now squats at the Eastern end of the cherry orchard giving an Australian flavour to an English scene.

Trees in Tasmania are not placed singly as lonely sentries to a property, more phalanx-like as statements of an ordered world. Perhaps a line of majestic oak may be a Stanton look for its next 200 years.

May is an intriguing month as the end of Autumn comes in fast catching the unprepared. Winter is not far off and with it the fog and frosty mornings. Nathan, Stanton’s carpenter has a project to undertake before this grey weather sets in, turning a conceptual idea into an imposing wooden fixture. Winter is always about motivation and zest for life.

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.

If Pete were here he would be keen to see the lawns limed and the orchard pruned then sprayed with Bordeaux for leafcurl. He may look askance at the Stanton vegetable patch but it is a work in progress.

As for the chook house, well it is not quite up to scratch (literally). Things have been unfolding in the field with old, dead branches cleared away from the trees showing pleasing lines of view particularly around the front dam where poplar leaves litter the ground like dull gold nuggets.

Of more use to Stanton inhabitants than gold is the apple cider coming back to the house after leaving as bulky red matter. During Autumn cider discussion here is a serious topic consuming those little grey cells until the Derwent Valley Autumn Festival takes centre stage in mid April

The light fades quickly around 5pm. There is soft rain falling making the front steps slippery underfoot but no one uses them for the moment, the worn centre of each runner collecting a little puddle from which the cat drinks.

In the adjoining paddock a group of about 14 young horses run the full length of the property fence line at speed chasing each other, learning to play. The sound of hooves on bare ground not an unpleasant diversion for the senses.

The first fire will go on tonight and the curtains will be drawn but no one at Stanton will be resting wearily during Autumn, there is too much to plan for the coming days and weeks.

Autumn in the Derwent Valley is a most wondrous experience- the best Stanton season by far.

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.

Reading is a pleasurable pastime now particularly Richard Broome’s new book Aboriginal Australians now in our library. It is a modern reminder to think of others who walked the Back River before us.

The English here had beer of sorts but not like the Cascade First Harvest now at the Cascade Visitors Centre in Hobart.

A pleasant 20km drive to the Bushy Park Valley brings the smell of hops into the car as you drive past fields being stripped of the precious vine.

Hop tractor drivers always wave to you as they trundle past along the main road to the hop drying rooms with trolleys swaying like huge green wigs. Smelling and driving is not against the law in Bushy Park.

Helen now resides on a hill overlooking the hop estates and it is quite a fabulous view from what is now a Stanton branch office.

Time to make the most of the light and do some mowing with a new Victa utility mower. “How’s the serenity”, the house asks.

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.

The great apple ID exercise went on for days and ended in an unsatisfactory confusion of nomenclature. Was it a Cox’s Orange Pippin or a Gravenstein, a White Lady or a Golden Delicious? One thing is known for certain, we do not have Sturmer cider apples as our friend Ashley the brewer from Two Metre Tall Company tells us.

February at Stanton is the month for blackberries, the breakfast delight so looked forward to by guests (they like quince as well). Under one such blackberry bush a ruinous shed sat for years before it was disturbed recently giving up its stories of adventures undertaken therein by small boys and huntsman spiders. The shed now sits partly completed in its new location in the apple orchard and will soon be home to Stanton’s newest occupants- Barnevelder chickens collectively called Stanton Ovation. The remaining timbers are to be winter warmers in the main room fireplace.

Autumn is coming now. You can see the light changing in the late afternoon, from haze to sharp colour, clouds thinning outtravelling high and fast.

February is the trigger for the new year at Stanton so we are getting ready… where are the slippers.

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.

It is an inspiring day with puffy whites in a blue sky. The Stanton Work Calendar is about to be booted up, a pippit of plovers scratching under an apple tree signals the commencement of the year’s activity. It’s low tech. There is much to do but not so the pressure of work as seasonal fun stuff if you see cutting firewood in summer as joyous, the results in winter are in the “quietly satisfied” basket.

Stanton in summer looks out onto brown fields where horses munch on the diminishing lines of green grass and the hills behind look hungry and uninviting. Martin Cash viewing this scene from his refuge above Stanton probably became more interested in meeting new friends at this time (if you get the picture).

There is still no general fire ban which is a blessing, but the bad signs are there, and so the winter growth around the dams need slashing.

A convict will do that one while the lavender and hop vine get a nice haircut. After all even in the country appearances have to be maintained. Garden fencing is now on the work order as a sheep can be viewed pruning a newly planted tree, sheep and blueberries are also not likely to be getting to know each other soon.

The orchard needs plenty of water along with pyrethrum spray on the pear, cherry, almond and hawthorn trees. Peter Cundall likes the natural approach, and snails it seems should get … “the midnight crunch method, carried out after dark with gumboots and a torch, satisfies a base, sadistic urge, and is extraordinarily successful”.

You may have read about Pete’s recent run in with the law. Stanton could use a new convict gardener.

Stanton is a community of travellers who just haven’t really met as yet and it certainly was a living community in 1817 where wheeled ploughs provided the horsepower and encircled the fields with natural fertilizer. The modern lot named Victa and Masport are more problematic and not great company. Some things do not change much over the years. Perhaps after a full day of working the land, building, eating, talking, the original occupants of the new house at Back River may have discussed (over a cup of tea) the latest issue of Blackwoods Magazine, printed between 1817 and 1980. Being sociable souls they may well have responded jovially to the reviews of Wordsworth and Coleridge, OR they may well have sat quietly with a mug of something strong and contemplated the remains of the day. Stanton is like that.

Perhaps tomorrow is a better time to commence the new work regime as music can be heard coming from the house. It is Karen Casey and SOLAS- The Maid on the Shore..now there is a song for Stanton- a woman who steals and sings songs for a living.

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!)