Lawley Farm B & B: In the Barossa Valley Region of South Australia

As you take in the sweep of vines in the Barossa Valley, there are signs of the region's early European heritage everywhere. Sometimes you'll get a quick peek of a Church steeple out in the distance. On closer inspection the classic Germanic construction speaks of a time when the early Silesian settlers made their way en-masse to this part of South Australia. Some like August and Bertha Grocke made their way to Krondorf and established what is now known as Lawley Farm.

“From what I understand the early Germans got here in about 1847. They built this place, their first cottage and lived here with a family of six. But old man Grocke he was knocked off his horse and dragged to his death in his early thirties. So it was actually widow Grocke for the next fifty years who did all the work and turned it into a very successful sheep station.”

Now the original cottages and outbuildings have been converted into Bed and Breakfast accommodation but the early signs of August, Bertha and their four children's occupation of this little patch of the Barossa are everywhere. That includes a subterranean secret, which says so much about the tenacity of the German settlers.

“We've been told they actually used to dig a hole, put ash and stone on the walls, fill it back in with sand, put pavers over the top of the sand and build a house on top of it. They’d wait some years for it to settle under it's own weight and then dig it out again. So the labor that went into a cellar was just incredible.”

The cellar was used to store pickles, smoked meats and all the rest needed to feed a family in the winter months. It's the kind of self sufficiency that Jack, Leslie and their daughter Alexandra have also taken to heart as they and guests go on the regular morning search for eggs.

In the early days, the block would have been laid out in the German Hufendorf style with a long thin strip of land extending out the back where Jack and Leslie now tend their cabernet sauvignon vines. When the German settlers first arrived they set about introducing their own agricultural practices and from the hilltop at Bethany, not far from Lawley Farm you still get a sense of intensive farming done the old way.

“At Bethany, the vineyards have long replaced the German style Hufendorf farms which once crossed the Barossa Valley. The Silesian settlers began arriving here in the early eighteen forties and a farmer would purchase a long strip of land which would extend at right angles to the main road and would go way out into the distance and often that plot of land was about the width that a farmer and horse could work in.”

Lawley Farm is now the ideal base from which to explore and indulge in the Valley's early history. Across the road is the refurbished Silesian barn, the work of local winemakers Grant and Helen Burge. And from the oldest B&B in the Barossa you can walk to Rockford's winery, while not far away, an historic walk around Bethany beckons - a trip through the region's German past.

Lawley Farm is on Krondorf Road near Rockfords Winery.

For bookings contact Lawley Farm B&B at lawleyfarm@ozemail.com.au or visit their web site www.lawleyfarm.com.au