The old adage says that good things, like fine wine, improve with age. Hazeldean’s farming operation, homestead and garden in the Monaro high plains are a case in point. They’ve been a work in progress since the 1860s, when James and Ann Litchfield arrived in the south-eastern NSW high country.
When James arrived in the colony from Saffron Walden in Essex, England, in 1852, he had a letter of introduction to William Bradley, a pioneering member of the Monaro squattocracy, who built an empire that, at its peak, covered 200,000 acres (81,000 hectares) of the naturally treeless high plains. James gained employment as a manager of one of William’s properties, Myalla. With the division of the region following the Lands Act of 1861 under Premier, John Robertson, James was able…
