A family living their dream
in the Yarra Valley.

An old farm, kept gently, opened to a few good guests at a time.

We are the Lodges — Elizabeth and Matthew, and our four (now mostly grown) children — and Home Farm has been ours for a little while now. Before us it belonged to Rex and Helen Bexley, who first planted these gardens and laid the bones of the place. We've tried to keep faith with what they began: a quiet permaculture philosophy, an idea they called simply Thrive — to let nature do what nature does, and to lean alongside it rather than against it.

The property runs to forty-three acres, much of it bordering Toolangi State Forest, and shelters Kenyon top-bar bee hives, a generous food forest, a quietly noisy flock of chickens, and more wildlife than we can usefully name. We share two of its homes — the Edwardian White Rose Cottage and the larger White House — with guests who come to slow down for a weekend.