LANDMARK AND LEGEND

Andy and Annie Clifford are the current custodians of a historic property that's been in their family for more than a century.

- KIRSTY MCKENZIE

Yallum Park's stately stone homestead and 20 acres [eight hectares] of parkland gardens may resemble an aristocratic English estate. But to Andy and Annie Clifford, it's just home, a place where every room and everything that's in them is made to be used.

"It's where I grew up, where I climbed trees and fell out of them," Andy says. "The land has been in my family for 106 years. Dad was born in the house in 1917 and lived here for all but the last two years of his life. He passed away in 2013 in a nursing home in Penola, which is our local town and where I went to school."

Yallum Park's history dates back to the spread of the squattocracy across South Australia and the very beginnings of the wine industry in the Coonawarra region. The first record of European settlement occurred in 1840 when Solomon, Josiah and Thomas Austin squatted on 117 square miles (30,300 hectares) and built a house from stone collected from the paddock. The Somerset farmers had come to Geelong in Victoria via Tasmania and their name lives on in Melbourne's Austin Hospital. In 1851, the Austins sold to Thomas and Harry Wells, who built a second house and then sold to Scottish pastoralist and politician John Riddoch in 1861.