Mica Grange is a place where privacy, scale and beauty meet: a 100.5-acre (approx.) landholding, 16 minutes by car from Castlemaine and 90 minutes from Melbourne, built around a three-level rendered brick residence, a self-contained function pavilion, and a garden with a documented history on the Open Gardens circuit. It is a property equally suited to a family home, a rural lifestyle holding, or a going concern for events and hospitality.
A winding gravel drive, lined with golden elms, sets the tone long before the house comes into view. The land rises through granite outcrops, ancient gums, and open pasture, opening out to a valley view that runs uninterrupted to the horizon from almost every point on the property, with two dams set across the paddocks below. It is working, usable acreage as much as a garden setting, suited to horses, small-scale grazing, or simply the quiet that comes with room to breathe.
The residence is arranged across three levels highlighted in Castlemaine stone. The lower level centres on an octagonal living and dining room, with a vaulted plywood ceiling and glazing on every side that opens the room to the same uninterrupted view. A solid wood heater anchors the room, keeping it warm through winter and adding to its sense of gathering. The kitchen runs alongside, built around a large island bench with stone benchtops, a stainless steel gas cooktop and oven, a wall oven, an integrated microwave, and a dishwasher, set up to cater comfortably for large parties. A 20.5m by 6.8m wraparound deck, built out over granite rock and shaded by established trees, extends the living space outdoors, holding the view from dawn to dusk. It has hosted long-table dinners for more than a dozen guests under open sky as the sun sets over the ranges, and its scale makes it equally suited to functions in its own right. The ground level holds the main bedroom, laundry, and two bathrooms that service the whole house. Above, the top level offers two further bedrooms and a home office, its window framing the same rolling countryside.
A short walk through the garden, past established topiary and flowering trees, brings you to the property's real point of difference: a freestanding function pavilion, its vaulted white beams radiating from a central point overhead and double-glazed windows wrapping the room in an unbroken view of garden, hills and open sky. With its own kitchenette and toilet facilities, and doors that open directly onto the lawn, the pavilion has hosted long tables set for celebration and evenings of live music carrying out across the valley, the view holding steady from first light through to dusk. Subject to council approval, it also presents the opportunity to be transitioned into multigenerational living or a self-contained guesthouse, alongside its established use for events.
The garden itself is the result of years of considered work, and has featured on the Open Gardens program for its design as much as its planting. Sandstone steps and dry-stone retaining walls terrace the slope below the house, softened by established topiary clipped into rounded forms and underplanted with hellebores, carpet roses, peonies and clipped box. A flowering cherry tree arcs over the garden's upper level, and in spring becomes a canopy of blossom framing the view beyond, while magnolia, ornamental pear and silver birch give structure and colour through the seasons, the valley view rarely out of sight at any turn.
Whether the appeal is a considered rural home, a landholding to make your own, or a venue where celebrations are already written into its history, Mica Grange offers the setting, the view and the sense of occasion to hold them all.
To see Mica Grange and its history of gatherings in full, visit micagrange.com.au
