Hi, today we're taking an exclusive tour
of Koonowla. We're up in the Clare Valley having a look at a beautiful working
farm – you can tell by the flies. And what they do for weddings up here. It's a
flexible and stunning property and they've got a brand new pizza oven. This is Unbridely TV. It's a mixed farm in that we grow all sorts
of crops. We grow wheat and barley, we would grow canola, and beans, and peas and all of those crops that normal farmers grow.
We also produce cattle here; straight Angus cattle we also have a Murray Grey cross herd as well. But we.. In your spare time? Yeah. We're pretty excited to start, start out doing weddings to take advantage of the of the gardens that were, that we established here at Koonowla. Yeah, because how long have you been
here, Andrew? I've been here since 1991 so it's not getting towards 30 years. Yeah, yeah! We did a lot of renovations to the homestead when we first got here and linked the original homestead to the cooks quarters there. So it's all one now. And then we converted the manager's quarters into a cellar door at the bottom of the
garden. And so now we've redeveloped all of the cellar door. So we've got a large
paved area with a pizza oven and all of that sort of thing going down onto the
lawns.
And and so that can be really well utilized by people who want to have
their wedding here. Koonowla, rather, is one of the six
original wineries in, in Clare and it is we are lucky enough to still have the
original old gravitational winery that is that was built here in the 1890s. Which
can actually be used as a wet weather option for the ceremony. Ah right – great! And if people want smaller, more intimate, weddings that can be held up there as well. This is one of the spots for the ceremonies, yeah? A lot of people have been married in the
driveway here others like to go over to where the
wisteria arbour is. That lines up with the front door of the homestead. And so, for
instance, the wedding tomorrow, the bride will come down our private driveway and
then she'll come in the back of the house.
And with all of her bridesmaids
sit down, probably have a calming glass of champagne, and and sit down there, settle down in the in the big sitting room. When they're ready they'll walk out that
front door and come directly down through this beautiful old wisteria
arbour which is well over a hundred years old and and have the ceremony here in
the open garden. Stunning! Everyone does things a little bit differently here. You can
choose where you want your ceremony to be and where you want to do anything
because you have the use of the the grounds for the entire day. All of the
roses are out at the moment. So October and November is a very good time for
having a wedding here.
As well as in that March/April period when when generally
you have a more benign climate. It's just so, so nice to be able to utilize the
garden. With the water restrictions and things around these days, there just
aren't that many big, open gardens that lend themselves to weddings. And having
the whole thing here, whether it be the ceremony, also the reception and the photographs – so everything can be done in the one spot.
There are good bus services from Clare too, that can run people in and out of the accommodation. There's
lots and lots of B&B's to stay at. The whole Valley is very tourist-friendly.. well, it's a destination isn't it? That's right. And these days in Clare and and out in some of the wineries there are lovely restaurants to, to go for lunch and dinner, so there's lots of options. Do you want to walk down there and see some of these spaces now? Yeah, let's do it! We can walk and have a chat at the same
time.
Yeah, absolutely! As we walk down there you'll see the cellar I mean the pizza oven that we
built recently and all of these layered paved areas which can be used by the, ah the wedding party for pre-dinner drinks. Its a commercial-size pizza oven that I, I
had built. I liked it because it was more of a sculpture than a than a pizza
oven. Do you know what, I was going to say that, Andrew. Cause all this, um, this these levels and everything, are really quite modern and clean. And then you've got the beautiful, old heritage stuff up there. I had to spend a lot of time trying to think about how to do this, so it didn't take away from the old-world feel of the of the lovely old buildings that were originally here. The last three weekends I've been I've been doing pizza days on Sunday. Oooh! And I've got everything just right for the distance here, for swinging the pizzas around under here; it's all working very
well.
I'm very happy. This area here through to the pizza oven is in full shade all Summer. It doesn't really get any sun on it until well, much later in the afternoon. This is the main spot here for receptions? Yes. The area here can, has a capacity to take up to 300 people in a marquee. On the on the right here are where the old drying sheds were for, for producing dried fruit. And then the previous owners were racehorse owners and so these stables here are um.. this is what you were talking about.. are remaining from that time. They're still in pretty good condition. Quite often someone will, at weddings,
they'll go to that centre stable and the bride and groom will go inside and open
up the the top door of the stable and they'll pop their heads out.
We're now moving towards the old gravitational winery which is up here on the right hand side. Lots of olive oil trees here; we produce our own olive oil here as well. So as you can see it's still in really good condition. Give you a sense of Australia here. Opportunity for going out into the vineyards and in into the vine rows and having your photographs taken in the vines, in amongst the vines. Everything is just a few metres away from where the wedding is so it's not, you don't have to travel very far. So, because we're a long way from the nearest house we don't have to have noise noise issues which you can often
have.. yes! when you're in a built-up area. As you can see I've I've put power all down the sides of this area and over in that corner so bands and things can be used
here quite easily without having, having cords running everywhere. What about bathroom facilities? We have portable loos that we we have out the back here. Also there's, for the bride/bridal party, they can use the cellar door loos which also have a bathroom where
they can do their makeup with a mirror and a basin and all of
that sort of stuff.
Oh, great! So you've got a beautiful remote location, where you're nowhere near anyone, so no one gives you any trouble, but you don't have the remote location troubles! Cheers! So, I'm not, I'm not saying you have to
get ACDC here to.. I think you do! <laughter>.
