It’s that historic Cobb & Co coach stop partially hidden behind a hedge and complemented by striking stables of the same bygone era.

Enticed by its faded circa-1841 sign and old world charm, for almost two decades now, every time I drive past the historic inn-come-private home, I’ve desperately wanted to stop and take a peek inside.

Given they started turning soil for its foundations just 16 years after Currie, Ovens and Wild - the first European explorers to venture this far south - stood on top of a nearby hill in 1823, it’s hand-crafted stone walls must harbour many a secret.

Heck, Solomon Solomon, the first publican here, probably served drinks to emancipated convicts, and soon after, his successors, Alexander Davidson and John Cullen, would have traded on the steady flow of miners heading south to try their luck on the gold fields at Kiandra and beyond.

Then there is its connection with the colony’s more nefarious characters, including the Clarke Gang who famously raided the inn in 1866. It’s enough to make any history buff salivate.

So, imagine my excitement, when last Saturday, while heading south on the Monaro Highway, I noticed that the Squatters Arms is for sale, and more significantly there is a ‘now open for inspection’ sign blowing in the breeze out the front.

Sure, I’m running late for an appointment in Cooma, but nothing is going to stop me from finally having a snoop inside the Squatters Arms.

I slam on the brakes (it’s ok, there was no one behind!) and in a pall of dust, steer the yowie mobile into the driveway, exactly where horses and carriages would have entered the gates in the mid-1800s.

The open house only has 30 minutes left so I need to move fast. Inside the front door is a large lounge room with hardwood floors and rendered stone walls, which must be thick, because although the road is only a stone’s throw away, the passing traffic noise is barely audible. The ceilings are high, the open fire is crackling.

However, it’s something on the floor in the corner of the room which catches my attention. It appears to be the outline of a trapdoor. On closer inspection I find a small latch and carefully prise it open to reveal a set of stairs leading down to a cellar, almost as big as the room above. Sure there a few cobwebs down here, but in a place this old, it would be disappointing if it were any other way.

“I often wonder what happened when bushrangers arrived, did people hide down there?” ponders Paul Hart, who along with wife Angela has owned the Squatters Arms and raised their young family here for the last 15 years. Imagine the games of hide n seek!

The Harts explain that when they first moved in, the only access to the cavernous cellar was from a hidden crawl-through under the front veranda, but they soon changed that by installing the trapdoor, “making the cellar much more accessible”. I love it. Forget the feature wall, who wouldn’t want a secret trapdoor in their home leading to underground bunker?

“When cleaning out the cellar we discovered some holes leading up into the lounge room floor where the keg lines had obviously been,” explains Paul. “So we think this room was originally the main bar.”

Still plucking cobwebs from my hair, back upstairs, it’s clear that the Harts have put their heart and soul into restoring this historic home. All up there are seven large bedrooms (little wonder it’s been used as B&B; as well), a modern kitchen (big enough to run a small cafe) and a luxurious main bathroom, where you can soak in a clawfoot bath while watching the flames in yet another open fire. Divine!

Angela recalls the first bath Paul enjoyed after finishing the bathroom makeover. “He was yelling out and I didn’t know why, I thought he might have slipped and hurt himself, so I raced in, only to discover he was asking me to bring him a scotch to drink in the bath!”

Having recently moved into Canberra, apart from indulgent baths, the Harts especially miss the size of the home.

“You can easily entertain 100 people here, it’s the perfect party house,” explains Paul. “Due to our proximity to the highway, during some celebrations we occasionally had unexpected guests.

“One family birthday there were lots of cars parked out the front, and a man on his way to Jindabyne drove in thinking we must have reopened as a pub.

“The guests were very accommodating and gave him a cup of coffee and a piece of birthday cake.”

No matter whether guests are invited or not, according to Angela, “talk invariably turns to the day in March 1866 when the Squatters Arms was famously raided by the Clarke Gang”.

Angela has even written a play about the hold-up which she hopes will one day be performed at either the house or the Cooma Theatre. “The bushranging history just gets in your blood,” she says.

In his encyclopaedic exposé, The Clarke Gang: Outlawed, Outcast and Forgotten (Rosenberg, 2015), historian Peter Smith outlines the dramatics series of events which unfolded on March 22, 1866, when the bushrangers arrived hoping to relieve publican John Cullen, who was also a well-known bookie, of his takings from the Cooma races held earlier that day.

Everything didn’t go as planned for the bushrangers for unbeknown to them, Cullen had cleverly sent his takings home with his young servant girl, Mary, who the bushrangers stopped not far from the Squatters Arms. However, according to Smith, Mary bravely “kept her nerve, saying she was just a poor girl returning from the races, and the bushrangers allowed her to go on her way”.

The quick-thinking servant then went into the bush and hid the money under a large rock before making her way back to the hotel “where she found Mrs Cullen and the entire household bailed-up”.

Annoyed at missing out on Cullen’s bulging bag of winnings from the races, after relieving their captives in the pub of their valuables, the gang then pilfered Cullen’s precious cache of supplies he had especially ordered in for a gala post-race dinner to be held that night.

The bushrangers then rode across the paddock and down to a nearby creek where they “enjoyed a jolly good feast … of ham, turkey, tongue, beer and a variety of alcoholic drinks”.

While this thwarted race day raid is the only documented report of bushrangers holding-up the Squatters Arms, local legend suggests there might also be a stash of booty hidden in nearby hills.

Paul confesses, “a mate once came over with metal detector to look for gold”. “He needed an area of ground clear of metal debris to calibrate his detector, but he had trouble for there’s metal buried absolutely everywhere,” says Paul.

While Paul and his mate didn’t uncover any loot (well, not that he’s telling us, anyway), they did find numerous antique artefacts including metal tools, hand-made nails and lengths of railway track buried near the stables.

Gold or no gold, for me the real treasure is the opportunity to finally poke around this Monaro landmark, albeit for just a short time.

While your Akubra-clad columnist would need to pen a lifetime of columns to make an offer, dreaming of one day calling it home, back in Canberra I head straight to my local newsagent.

So, if next time you pass the Squatters Arms and notice the yowie mobile parked out the front, you’ll know my lotto numbers must have come up. Either that, or I’m just snooping around on another open house.

The Squatters Arms: Located on the Monaro Highway, 7km north of Cooma. Open this Saturday, June 9, from 11.30am–12.15pm or by appointment. $650,000. More: George Nikolic from McGrath Woden. Ph: 0429 990197.

Memories: Did you visit the Squatters Arms when it was a pub? If so, I’d love to hear from you. Current owner Angela Hart says her dad recalls that as a teenager around 1960, he and his mates rode horses all the way from Michelago to the pub for his first beer. It has also operated as a B&B;, antique stop and a café.

Read all about it: Peter C Smith’s The Clarke Gang: Outlawed, Outcast and Forgotten  is now in its second print run and available at all good bookstores or via www.rosenbergpub.com.au RRP: $49.95.

Did You Know? On their way to rob the Squatters Arms on March 22, 1866, the Clarke Gang met a couple of travellers and ordered them “to turn out their pockets”. According to Smith, one lady they accosted was so frightened she ran away, “unfortunately falling into a nearby creek and breaking her arm”.

Mighty Mount
A typo in last week’s feature on the natural wonders of Kosciuszko National Park which reported the height of Mt Jagungal at 20,016 metres had mountaineers reaching for their ice picks.

“It didn’t strike me as being quite that tall when I climbed it,” cheekily tweeted Steve Leahy.

“If Jagungal really was that high, that would make it about nine times higher than Mt Kosciuszko (2228m) and make Mt Everest (8848m) look like a small hill,” wrote another reader.

For the record, Jagungal is 2016 metres above sea level and according to Greg Hutchison, “on a clear day can be viewed from Mt Kosciuszko and vice versa”.

Little Birdy
Meanwhile, the annual autumn migration of yellow-faced honeyeaters (Caligavis chrysops) down from the Snowy Mountains to “warmer climes” (Mass Migration, June 2) prompted Alice Scott of Wamboin to write “I’m glad that they [the birds] consider Wamboin as ‘warmer climes’”.

“There was one [a yellow-faced honeyeater] at my birdbath (cleverly placed next to a Grevillea johnsonii which seems to be in flower all year), just last week,” reports Scott.

Several years ago, this column featured a photo of a lone robot-inspired letterbox in Hoskinstown.

Well, it appears that the robot repository isn’t so lonely anymore. While recently snooping around the rural precinct, prolific geocacher Thomas Schulze of Kambah noticed the metal man, which is located near the corner of Rossi and Hoskinstown roads, has attracted a friend sporting fluoro green sunnies.

I wonder if the solar panel perched on the friend’s head means that it ‘comes alive’ at night, terrifying passing motorists (and kangaroos), or at least powers the light bulb protruding from its left arm. I’d love to see an after-dark photo.

CONTACT TIM: Email: timtheyowieman@bigpond.com or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick.

Clue: Milking the cow
Degree of difficulty: Medium.

Last week: Congratulations to John Kemp of Duffy who was the first reader to correctly identify last week’s photo as a concrete retaining wall at the proposed dog park, on the site of the former Stromlo Forestry Settlement off Warragamba Avenue, Duffy.

Kemp just beat a number of other eagle-eyed Weston Creek residents to the prize, including Lester Southwell and Helen Cohen, as well as Conrad van Heston of Woden.

Many readers, including Noelle Waugh who submitted the photo, are puzzled why the years “1969, 1971 and 1976” are etched into the concrete. Thinking they may have been the years certain stands of radiata pine were planted at the settlement, I contacted several former forestry workers, but unfortunately none were able to shed any light on the matter.
Someone must know.

How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email sent after 10am, Saturday June 9, 2018 will win a double pass to Dendy.