Mr & Mrs Smith

We can’t help but feel a bit like Charles Ryder, the grateful guest in Brideshead Revisited, up here on the hillside at the Priory Country Lodge. The Tasmanian Central Highlands in mid-winter are forbiddingly cold, and the lands surrounding us are part fields, part wilderness. Through the rippled glass of the massive bay window, the lights of the town of Bothwell wink at us from the river plain below. Having dressed for dinner, Mrs Smith and I sip an evening G&T by the toasty fire, feeling snug and utterly indulged. I draw the silk curtains to a heavy close, and the room is even warmer: candlelight stretches up the walls towards 13-foot ceilings as an Antarctic wind buffets the sandstone walls and howls around the chimney pots. Nibbles arrive on an antique tray. We read. We play cards. Being transported back to another age is delicious.

Greg Peacock, our host and the instigator of the Priory’s renovation, bought the house four years ago and has taken it from ruin to rarity. The retired surgeon who lived here previously had a demanding schedule of golf, whisky, fishing, whisky; he was a little too distracted to worry about dull things like maintenance. When Greg arrived, the library was the only habitable room, the rest of the house slowly weathering away. There were possums in the roof and birds flying through the kitchen. And when work on the place began, the Priory’s isolation presented some logistical problems: it’s an hour from the Tasmanian capital of Hobart and an hour back, so in an eight-hour day the builders were swinging hammers for only six. Manoeuvring some of the larger pieces of furniture through the 19th-century doorways also proved difficult. Many items were sourced from the Queensland Club in Brisbane, which former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen had demolished early one morning. These include the gargantuan kitchen table, once a writing desk where one imagines fat cheques were cut. But Greg’s ambition proved an irresistible force, and the Priory today is transformed.

Giant-size keys gain us entry through a gorgeous stained-glass gothic doorway onto the Persian rug in the entrance hall. Here we’re faced with a choice: turn right into the hunting-and-fishing room, or left into the library. The former is full of fly-fishing gear, new golf clubs and reams of info on where to snag the biggest trout; in the latter, classical music plays, there’s a Bayeux-esque tapestry on the wall and shelves of curious old tomes to choose from. Here, There & Everywhere by Lord Frederick Hamilton or Kobbe’s Complete Opera Book edited by the Earl of Harwood, perhaps? Straight ahead and to the right is the movie room, with a big screen, an open fire, a congregation of comfy couches and today’s newspapers. Continuing down the hall and to the right is the country kitchen. Breakfast is served at its communal table, and a veritable café of coffee and tea line the bench. To the left is the formal dining room, flowing through into a magazine-strewn sunroom, and a lavish living room with yet another open fire – and with it the temptation to smoke pipes and discuss wool prices. It’s full of items from other times and places: marble hearths, ships in bottles, half-played games of chess, rustic walking sticks, art deco glass lamps, portraits of colonial madams, colourful 1940s cigarette cards mounted and framed... Mrs Smith and I make use of the objects to indulge our love of light competition with a round of the memory game.

Up the narrow Huon pine staircase are the four guest rooms, angular attic-style suites with dormer windows revealing surrounding farmland. Mrs Smith flings herself on to the impossibly comfortable king-size bed covered with tartan throws. The bathroom features more marble than an Italian mountainside, a plate-sized shower rose, plush robes and Küdos toiletries. Outside in the groomed grounds are a private sauna and separate barbecue pavilion overlooking a lake, though we hear these might be converted to more accommodation.

For a former investment banker, Greg can sure cook. Timed to suit us, dinner is a generous country affair: pea-and-ham soup with hot, buttered bread, followed by a slow-cooked lamb tagine with green olives. The Blackjack Shiraz from his cellar is a robust match for the succulent main course. Afterwards, we repair to the masculine opulence of the living room for a cheese platter of Tasmanian King Island blue and a deliciously whiffy washed rind, with crackers and apple paste boiled-down from a thousand Tasmanian apples. Greg arrives with a carafe of conversation-inspiring port. We don’t drink the whole thing, but it wouldn’t have bothered him if we had… The booze is on display and yours to serve via an honesty system. Take a wee dram and scribble your tally on a pad.

Tomorrow Greg promises us a home-cooked breakfast: secret-recipe muesli, yoghurt, eggs on buttery toast, bacon and beans, plunger coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice. Thus fuelled, we might take a walk up Mount Adelaide behind Bothwell – it’s more of a hill, really – or go and check out the nearby Nant Distillery, which has been producing single malt for a couple of years now. We’d like to go fishing, but winter isn’t trout season. In the summer this place is liable to be booked solid with water-wading fly-guys regaling each other with tales of big ones that got away.

By the end of the weekend, I can’t help but think that Greg has pulled together a decadent masterpiece: the immaculate restoration of a heritage homestead, a pristine highlands environment, and modern pleasures celebrated amid the finery of the past. ‘Julia? Sebastian? A stroll in the grounds before dinner?’