'You'd drive right past it' from the street but this Ngunnawal home predates Canberra

Tim Hubbard and Jess Ahlgren didn’t set out to buy Ngunnawal’s oldest house – the couple were looking for an affordable family home with five bedrooms and 10 Yirawala Street just happened to fit the bill.

“We were sort of Brady bunching – so we both had two children – and we needed a house with five bedrooms and this fitted into that,” Tim says.

It was only after the paperwork was signed that they discovered the immense history behind the place. And how much work was needed to restore it.

But after five long years of landscaping, sanding, bogging and painting to get it to today’s gorgeous state, the couple is finally ready to open the gardens up to the public this weekend as part of an ‘Open Gardens Canberra’ festival.

Known as the ‘Tea Gardens Homestead’, the house was constructed in the 1860s by one of Canberra’s oldest families, the Rolfes.

At the time, the nearest centre was Hall, and Tea Gardens Homestead was connected to where the Barton Highway runs now by a dirt driveway.

It was also back-to-front, in that where the ‘front’ of the house is now – facing the street – was actually the back in the original plans – and today’s backyard was the front, and included a curved driveway and steps leading up to the door.

“Looking at it from the street, you’d drive right past it … It’s like a typical suburban home almost.”

It’s been more than a house in its time, too.

Before St Francis Church was built in Ginninderra in 1872, records show the Rolfe family would host Sunday Mass and up to 20 local Catholics would gather in the house’s loungeroom, followed by a “substantial breakfast … with no one ever being asked … to contribute a meal in any way”.

The property then passed to another family in 1964 and became known as ‘Ginninderra Park’. In 1981, new owners came along again, changed it to ‘Baden Lodge’ and turned it into a horse riding school.

Where the Gungahlin Lakes Golf Club lies today, at the bottom of the terraced backyard, for instance, used to be a horse racing track.

“We’ve found heaps of horseshoes and nails while landscaping the terraces,” Tim says.

By the time Tim and Jess bought it in April 2020, the house and gardens were in a bad way.

“It was a deceased estate and needed a lot of renovation and restoration. It was a bit of a doer-upper.”

The floorplan has changed over the years, with the original four rooms now forming the central part of the house. It was extended twice, first in the 1950s and then in 1965. But it seems everyone along the way tried their best to keep it original, and that was Tim and Jess’s mission too.

“It still has the original fireplace in the middle of the home and the original wooden floorboards. It still has that heritage look, with the terracotta roof tiles, doubled-bricked Canberra red brick exterior, and concrete pillars.”

The most significant work actually took place in the gardens, which were an overrun mess when the couple bought it.

“Nothing had been done,” Tim says.

“We put in some new fencing, a bit of a fire pit area and veggie garden … Jess and I have just sort of developed as we’ve gone alone. There was no detailed plan or anything like that. It was just, ‘Oh, let’s do this now’.”

The yard includes an original brick retaining wall, built of sandstone, and the red-brick edging around the back lawn that once marked out the front driveway.

There was an investigation in the early 1990s to see if the property qualified for Heritage Listing in the ACT. In the end, it was found “too damaged to the original structure” – in other words, too modified.

Tim doesn’t see this changing in the future either.

“We love it, and the neighbours have been fantastic too,” he says.

“They’ve all been complimentary about the amount of time and effort we’ve put into it.”

The Tea Gardens Homestead gardens at 10 Yirawala Street, Ngunnawal, will be open to the public from 10 am to 4 pm, Saturday to Sunday (12 to 13 April). No RSVP is necessary.

Visit Open Gardens Canberra for more information.