Farm Stays in Southern Highlands, NSW

Ninety minutes south-west of Sydney, the road climbs onto a cool green plateau and the landscape turns almost English: hedgerows, hawthorn windbreaks, stone walls and fat cattle in emerald paddocks around Bowral, Moss Vale, Berrima, Robertson and Kangaroo Valley's rim. The Southern Highlands sit at 600 to 700 metres, high enough for real seasons — frost and occasional snow flurries in winter, an autumn that turns the towns' avenues of exotic trees copper and gold.

This has been grazing country since the 1820s, and it still runs on cattle, sheep, horses and increasingly cool-climate vines. A farm stay in the Southern Highlands usually means a cottage or homestead on a working property, mornings feeding stock in the mist, and afternoons in the antique shops and bakeries of Berrima or at the cellar doors around Centennial Road. Robertson, on the eastern escarpment edge, adds famous potatoes, dairy country and lookouts where the plateau drops a sheer 700 metres to the coastal plain.

The Highlands are also quietly serious horse country — polo fields, studs and equestrian properties are everywhere between Bowral and Sutton Forest, and some hosts can accommodate travelling horses with post-and-rail yards and paddock turnout. Come in autumn for the colour, winter for open fires and pub lunches, or spring for tulips and lambs.