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Nestling in a hundred acres of good farm land 75 km south of Adelaide, Brook side is an old stone house built in the 1850s, now restored after long neglect. The task yielded surprises for its present owners, Jenny and Patrick, such as a slate floor under old layers. Margot Balmain. The story of Brook side starts off in 1848, when the young colony of South Australia was only twelve years old. That’s when James and Agnes Smith from Scotland, coming out to settle in Australia, Left the emigrant ship at Port Adelaide because of Agnes’s ill health and pregnancy. These young Scots were certainly the stuff that pioneers were made from: undaunted by the distance, they walked all the way.
There, James found work with a local squatter, and Agnes became post mistress. In 1852 James Smith set off to the gold digging and struck it rich. On his return he bought land and built Brook side — literally beside a stream. All the stone for the house was quarried on the property, and bricks baked in the farm kiln. Over many decades, Brook side had suffered from neglect, and was in need of extensive restoration when Jenny bought it. “I believed it was structurally sound but had no idea what I might find under the accretions of plaster and rubbish,” she says. “In the kitchen, plaster covered the stone walls, and half the fireplace had been boarded in. When we stripped it back, we found -this wonderful fireplace, with a large baker’s oven set in.
