'Homemade jam and hens': A tree change from Sydney to the Southern Highlands

When it comes to making property decisions, Rees Rear and his partner Brett Ramsey are driven by three main things: their sons Chandler, 12, and twins Blake and Joel, 11.

At the end of 2020, the family moved from their home in Sydney’s inner west to a rural property outside historic Berrima in the Southern Highlands to give the boys a taste of country living.

The village, with a population of fewer than 700, is known for its heritage-listed buildings – some built as early as the 1830s – plus galleries, cafes and a surrounding wine region.

The family have rented a five-bedroom, two-bathroom home on four hectares (10 acres). With an in-ground pool and built-in pizza oven on a large deck they can take in a picturesque vista that’s home to kangaroos and a resident wombat.

It’s a vastly different lifestyle for the boys, who’d lived in inner-city Annandale their whole lives.

“It’s so nice,” Rear says. “I’ve made apricot jam, I’ve made plum sauce, I’ve made crab-apple jelly, because there’s all these wild fruit trees around. We’ve just got 10 hens and they’ve just started laying, so we’re going to have 10 free-range eggs per day.”

Idyllic for sure, but Rear, who works as a real estate agent for The Agency, says the move wouldn’t have happened without the influence of COVID-19. He and Ramsey “didn’t really know the Southern Highlands at all”, but started looking there when their original tree-change plan – to move across the ditch to the far part of New Zealand’s North Island – was stopped in its tracks by the pandemic.

“I’d really wanted our boys to experience a New Zealand upbringing, because Brett and I are both originally from New Zealand,” Rear says. They’d gone as far as lining up a school for the boys to attend, but “once COVID-19 hit, that sort of changed everything.”

The seed they’d planted towards living in a more rural environment had already taken hold.

“I thought, well perhaps the next best thing for us would be a little bit of a country lifestyle, just to ground [the boys], and to get them exposed to how beautiful that can be.”

The Southern Highlands has been a new beginning for everyone, with the family making new memories as they become familiar with their local area. The three boys are settling into their new school, Oxley College in Burradoo, which Rear says was one of the drivers for choosing their current location.

“We don’t really have children for too long, really. The time seems to fly. They could leave home at 18, so this is the last thing that we could do for them that we feel is important – the benefit of a really good education,” he says. “The ethos across the school this year is about being kind, the same as Jacinda Ardern. Kindness – it’s what the world needs.”

The couple plans to continue renting in the Southern Highlands for at least the first 12 months, allowing them to experience their new community before making a decision about where specifically they’ll purchase a home. With increased interest in the area, Rear says “finding property is really hard” but “we’re really happy here”.

Rear and Ramsey remain the owners of their former home in Annandale, a property featured by Grand Designs Australia, which involved a complex build wedged on a narrow inner-city block between a pub and heritage-listed house.

While they’ve had to give up their views of the Sydney city skyline offered by that house, renting out it out has helped ease their move to the country substantially.

“The rent that we achieve from [the Annandale home] very easily pays for rent here, plus the school fees, plus some,” Rear says. “So, I’m saying to all the city people, come on down!”

He says it’s only about 75 minutes on the highway to visit family and friends in Sydney, where Rear’s mother and siblings live, while the riches of a more simple life are waiting for them when they arrive home to Berrima.

“Coming out here, I find one tends to grow older slower,” Rear says. “That’s what I think. It’s just so much easier, and just less stress.”

This story is a part of our series on Australians who saw the possibilities along their property journeys. For more property advice, read Domain’s guide to the Australian property market during COVID-19.