From farm to manor house. The Story behind Montville’s Mill Hill Manor

Mill Hill Manor is an elegant and gracious home. 

The 1926 house built by Alf and Harriet Bowser.

This Old House by Cate Patterson
of Montville History Group

This old house at 41 Mill Hill Road, Montville has seen many owners, including some well-known locals. Mill Hill Manor as it is now called, sits directly above Baroon Pocket where Bunya festivals once were held, and the wind still echoes with clapping sticks and didgeridoo.

Alf and Harriet Bowser bought the land (8 acres 12 perches) from Peter Weitemeyer, the first European settler in Montville who selected his 160 acres, Portion 11V of the Parish of Maleny in 1887.

Built by Arthur Thompson in 1926, between the two wars, the house was a practical worker’s bungalow (Queensland War Service Home Commission Plan No. 5), and affordable at around £600 (A factory worker in the 1920s earned £200 per year).

It was a comfortable home with a living room, dining room, kitchen and two bedrooms. Most of the living was done on the verandahs, and the high ceilings provided a welcome airflow in keeping with the sub-tropical climate. The roof had three front gables and one side gable. Casement windows caught and controlled the degree of breeze. Similarly, the locally milled stumps allowed airflow underneath the bunya pine floorboards.

Timber skillion hoods protected the windows from direct sun and storms. Other period features included a circular window, a bay window and battens. A paling fence and trellis frame over the single gate enclosed the house garden. 

Alf and Harriet grew citrus and pineapples and by 1930 had planted macadamias between the rows of fruit trees as wind breaks for the citrus crops. The trees grew quickly and were productive. Alf also grew gladioli and won prizes at the annual shows. The Bowsers lived there for 18 years.

It was still a working farm when novelist Eleanor Dark and her husband Dr Eric Dark purchased the home in 1951. Eleanor called it Bopplenut (Bauple Nut) after the endemic species of macadamias that grew on the property. Here she wrote the novel Lantana Lane (1959) based on the day-to-day events and entertaining characters of the Montville community. It was after the Darks sold that the property became known as The Macadamery.

Several other owners have had literary connections – Russ and Margaret Siddall had a Montville book business (Mill Hill Books) and Lois and Walter McVitty were publishers of a Children’s Books Company.

When the McVittys bought the house in 1992 the house had been extended to include a study with floor to ceiling bookcases, two additional bedrooms and a bathroom along with a side verandah that opened out from the study and linked the main bedroom and a guest bedroom. It had become a gracious home twice its original size.

With the hard work of later owners, the property opened its gates to the public in 2007 as part of the Open Gardens Scheme with a rainforest walk, hedges and heritage plantings, fenced raised vegetable gardens, lush subtropical mature palms, tree ferns, colourful cordylines and bird of paradise plants framing the swimming pool to the west of the house. 

At this time decking to the western, southern and eastern sides of the house was added as was a guest cottage modelled on the original house. 

This year the decks have been further extended and the present owners Margie and Mark Henderson, like the original owners, do most of their living here.