Alicia Gauld is the owner of Murrumbooee, a property situated in Bemboka, New South Wales. The property is a private bushland retreat, bordered by the Southeast Forest National Park on two sides. Murrumbooee is a waterfall paradise on Brown Mountain featuring a junction of the Nunnock River with Nunnock Creek at an elevation of 590 meters. This water source provides gravity-fed permanent water to the property resulting in swales as well as a dam, a necessary feature for bushfires and conservation. The owner has also attended two Cultural Burn Workshops with Koori Country Firesticks and applied methods learnt to the landscape.
Alicia has a home at Murrumbooee as well as organic run/permaculture designed gardens, orchard, food forest and bees. The property also includes an eco-retreat where the owner offers a two-day weekend nature immersion, for guests to take a peaceful break to reconnect and bathe in natural surroundings. Murrumbooee offers unique camping in a tree tent, a three-person hammock, as well as a sauna/sweat and cold plunge in the pristine Nunnock River. Guests can partake in a myriad of opportunities, such as wildlife watching, stargazing, bushwalking/hiking, trail running, rock hopping, nature photography, journalling, swimming in the waterholes or just sitting around a campfire, relaxing and unwinding.
There are 30 hectares on the diverse property set aside exclusively for habitat conservation and regeneration, as well as a potential wildlife corridor linking the area below the Snowy Mountains Highway. In the future Alicia aims to open the property for WWOOFers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) for educational work exchange with overseas guests. In addition, a weeding rehabilitation planting and fencing working group will assist in the preservation of diverse and fragile remnant rainforest patches.
The property spans 46 hectares across various vegetation classes including wet and dry sclerophyll forest and grassy woodlands and including plant community types such as wet fern forest, montane/escarpment dry shrub-herb, grass forest as well as riparian species and a remnant rainforest patch.
Within it’s different slope aspects, river flat, gullies and ridges, there exists wet fern forest with native plants such as bracken ferns (Pteridium esculentum), maidenhair ferns (Adiantum aethiopicum), tree ferns, vines, the montane/escarpment dry shrub-herb and grass forest of the property feature plant species such as silvertop (Eucalyptus sieberi), white ash (Eucalyptus fraxinoides), brown barrel (Eucalyptus fastigata), maiden’s bluegum (Eucalyptus globulus maidenii), mountain grey gum (Eucalyptus cypellocarpa), shining gum (Eucalyptus nitens) and stringybark. Riparian species on the property include three kinds of rare rock orchid (Dendrobium sp.), plentiful mosses and lichens. A remnant rainforest patch on the property includes species such as kurrajong (Brachychiton populneus), Pittosporum sp., black olive berry (Elaeocarpus reticulatus) and white lilly pilly (Syzygium smithii).
An extensive and growing number of wildlife is found at Murrumbooee with a trail camera set up to collect sightings of animals around the property such as quolls, bandicoots, wallabies, possums, platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), kangaroos (Macropus giganteus), wombats (Vombatus ursinus), superb lyrebirds (Menura novaehollandiae), boobook owls (Ninox boobook) tawny frogmouths (Podargus strigoides), eels and an abundance of birds, marsupials, reptiles, fish and insect life.
Want to camp at Murrumbooee? Visit their himcamp page here: ‘Murrumbooee’ ~ Waterfall Paradise! – Hipcamp in Bemboka, New South Wales
Contact the owner
This sanctuary has been listed by Alicia Gauld who can be contacted by phone on 0498253826 or amgauld@hotmail.com
