Balin Garu - Gay Country Homestay Bed & Breakfast Retreat Accommodation, Northern NSW, Australia

Sol & George

George first visited friends nearby more than 30 years ago, fell in love with the landscape and the river and has been a regular visitor ever since. We purchased the property in 2003, had the bunk house complex built and moved from Sydney in March 2006 to enjoy the tranquility of country life, our passion for nature conservation, our love of trees and gardens and to foster caring community among men. As owner builders and with the help of many incredibly talented craftsmen we commenced the main house in April 2006 and moved in June 2007 allowing us a wonderful opportunity to have our friends to stay and meet many new visitors from across the world.

At the same time, we began creating a beautiful vegetable and flower garden, orchards of citrus, stone fruits, pecans and other exotics, as well as a large duck pond whilst planting hundreds of native trees and shrubs to attract the birds and other wildlife, a work in progress, hopefully a gift for generations to come.

The traditional Aboriginal owners of this part of NSW were the Bundjulung people of which there appears to have been a clan based around the Copmanhurst area which spoke a separate dialect and from which the words Balin Garu, literally “river stone”, have been taken. The property was originally part of Newbold Station, settled by Europeans in the 1840s, and in the early colonial period, the land was intensively logged, particularly for red cedar, followed by dairying and sheep and now mainly beef cattle production.

We wanted to escape from the busy lifestyle of the city and create a haven of peace and quietness, to enjoy the immense natural beauty of the land, the river and its wildlife and to do our best to restore the ecological values of the land and its smaller water courses. We long for a world where people live in respect and harmony with each other and the land with a sense of community and mutual support, contributing to a caring and peaceful world. We want to share these concepts and our home with those of like mind and commitment.

So we welcome guests who just want to rest, to experience the natural beauty of this place and the surrounding countryside (including many National Parks), to share in the activities of developing and maintaining the property and the gardens, to learn about environmental sustainability, to create things of beauty and/or to explore ideas of the mind, the heart and the soul.

More specifically, we want to create a place of retreat for men and for personal growth and creativity workshops that complement our philosophy and purposes outlined above. Among these, Body Electric has become particularly important for us and we would hope you will visit their website at www.bodyelectricoz.org.