NSW Country Getaway: Turon Gates
By Anna Warwick
I do like a good wine tour and driving through rolling hills and sampling country fare… I like old buildings and rustic charm and towns with a story and characters with a totally different outlook on life. Thus the overrun Hunter Valley has lost its charm for me – I find it too commercial and expensive.
However, who knew that Mudgee – just four hours drive from Sydney – was the authentic country paradise? It’s got everything NSW can offer by way of history - people have lived in the region for generations (we met a road maker whose grandparents had travelled by horse and buggy to Sydney once a year – it took them a week to get there and a week to get back) and there are crumbling gold mining towns and structures built by Chinese goldminers a hundred years ago scattered about the landscape. There are boutique wineries and music festivals and cafes where you can sit and watch olive oil being pressed. There are markets and jams and art… It’s the real thing and as much as I am raving I felt a bit like a useless city slicker among all those robust mountain folk. We really did meet an astonishing number of accomplished intellectuals/eccentric entrepreneurs on our 48 hour travels.
I took my mum and my brothers and my brother’s girlfriend. When we got to Turon Gates, Mum and I just started laughing and laughing – two urban beach dwellers in a tiny ‘convenient’ Japanese car who suddenly found ourselves on a stony dirt road surrounded by kangaroos, sheep, horses, goats, gum trees… and SILENCE. It was like landing on the moon!
We got to our beautiful cabin and were just completely blown away – we poured ourselves a chardy and danced around the cosily furnished rooms and out onto a veranda that looked over nothing but rolling hills and bushland as far as the eye could see. Wow. It felt like home - with the sophistication of a resort and enough room to sleep eight. We had a full kitchen to use and a massive barbeque on the verandah... the cabin was a work of art.
Turon has the kind of air that revives the soul and refreshes the body. There’s a lot to do there but it’s also tempting to just lie in a hammock and do NOTHING but take in the nature. It is dry at the moment but still fertile as it has its own river – 15k of river, which the owners Soren and Sonya Lunoe originally used for fly-fishing trout.
And here we come to the real story – Sonya and Soren! This couple is dynamite. A Dutch immigrant, Soren Lunoe was a multimillionaire and award winning restaurateur by 25. He bought a Rolls Royce and the land at Turon. Then had multiple entrepreneurial adventures (too numerous to go into here...). Sonya ran several fashion businesses, and they had four children.
At 60 Soren is “retired”. Which means he runs two properties – one of which he has developed an underground irrigation system for. He grows grapes and makes wines there – now a business. The other is Turon Gates which began as the Lunoe’s family getaway until all their friends and friends’ friends discovered it and they had to build extra cabins. Now they have 22 and it’s become another business.
Soren and Sonya have resited the urges of their kids to build a pool, add a tennis court or buy dirt bikes to hire out at Turon. Soren wants to keep it simple – “why else to do we try to get away from the city life?” he asks, as he serves us a 2001 cabernet he made himself, with the neck dipped in red wax. We dine on his roast beef and vegies from the garden as he tells us stories of his wildly successful bohemian Sydney restaurants circa 1973, and running his fishing business in the Gilbert Islands where he invented a calcium enriched icecream for the natives...
Soren’s entrepreneurial spirit is unwavering. He’s revamped the blink-and-you’d-miss-it little town of Capertee near Turon, by ‘helping them’ put in a playground and gardens and set up a blue light night for the local kids… At home on the property he never stops thinking – inventing ways to get water up the mountain from the river to the cabins and a technique using light to keep the 'roos out without shooting them.
Soren’s philosophy is simple – you’ve got to give it a go – why not? “When your number’s up its UP and that’s it! Nothing you can do about it.” Soren lives to have fun. he believes it's important to get away and spend time in front of a campfire with loved ones, invoking the innate tradition of fireside yarns which sustained human beings for thousands and thousands for years before TV. And, left to ourselves without distraction, my family did talk and laugh that weekend - more than we have had a chance to in years.
Turon Gates is BIG FUN. And it’s only $500 per weekend for the whole fam (amazing lunch with Soren is extra)! PLUS you can bring your dog. I recommend the gentle horse ride along the river with resort manager Sarah and the resident dogs (who try to catch the wild goats) – magic. I could go on – but this story is long enough already. Check out the Turon Gates website. I’ll be going back for sure. Thanks very much for having us Sonya and Soren; we will remember that holiday forever. x
HISTORY OF MUDGEE
THINGS TO DO AROUND MUDGEE
