When his father drowned in the River Wakefield across from the paddocks at Martindale Station, Edmund Bowman was 11 years old. The Station was an 11,000 acre Merino sheep farm in a vast valley of land built up by his father, a free man and immigrant to Australia. As a boy Edmund lived with his brothers, miles from the nearest neighbor in a land of cicadas, gum trees and ferocious summer heat.
Edmund inherited the station, the land, the sheep and a vast sum of money He later went to Cambridge University, graduated without remark, and returned from London to run the station.
But Southern Australia was a long way from England. And at 21, Edmund wanted to become a country squire and “Lord of the Manor,” rather than owner of a remote sheep station in the uncivilized country of Australia. So to confirm his pedigree and show his wealth Edmund built the Georgian mansion, “Martindale Hall” for 30,000 pounds, a significant sum in 1841. He had a butler, a housekeeper, 13 servants, a billiards room, a formal dining room with primitive air conditioning and many large crystal chandeliers.
He lived a princely lifestyle with formal dinners, balls, polo games and imported guests.
Ten years later, after spending all of his inheritance and mortgaging his land and the Hall, a strapped Edmund left to seek a new fortune farther north in the Flinders Ranges.
Today Martindale Hall is best known for its appearance as the girl’s college in the Peter Weir film, “The Picnic at Hanging Rock.” If you see the movie you will see the house and the land and hear Edmund’s cicadas endlessly buzzing still.
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