Georgian-style Goulburn home on the market for the first time in almost 50 years

They say memories make a house a home. For Mark Walsh, that couldn’t be more true at his parents’ Goulburn home, which is now on the market and offering buyers a rare opportunity to own a property built with love.

The three-bedroom home at 44 Clyde Street was a sanctuary for his parents, Kevin and Margaret Walsh, for 48 years.

The couple purchased the 2.02-hectare parcel of land in 1971 in a bid to build their forever home.

The inspiration for the house was the Old Government House in Parramatta, in Sydney’s west, Mark said.

“My mother adored the building at the time. They were thinking of building a new house, so my father drew up a plan and got it built to replicate the facade,” he said.

“It took about 12 months to build the house itself and the garden surrounds was an ongoing project … my parents slowly built that up over time.”

Mr and Mrs Walsh were big on gardening, planting 300 trees within the first few years of living in the home. 

“They gradually added to it and it now has more than 600 trees planted across the property,” Mark said.

“They were great gardeners … my mother loved it and even in her 80s, she was still gardening seven days a week.”

Mr and Mrs Walsh picked out every detail of the house down to the light switches.

The vintage cedar staircase was sourced from a demolition site and purchased for only $10, the living room rug was custom made from overseas and the retaining wall around the home was made from recycled rocks from old houses in Goulburn.

While the house hasn’t undergone any renovations over the years, it has been meticulously maintained with the family attending to every nook and cranny in the house that needed fixing.

“My father was assiduous … if the slightest thing needed doing like painting, for instance, he would get it done straight away,” Mark said.

There were many moments Mark remembers in the house from wandering the brightly lit hallways in the evenings as a teenager, the weekend drive to his parents’ property and the annual family Christmas dinners where everyone would gather around the 18-seater dining table.

“All the adults would be in the kitchen and the living room would have the Christmas tree in it with all the presents for the grandkids,” Mark said.

“My parents used to hold regular dinner parties there as well and would have every seat filled, there was a minimum of 18 people – the table, the room, the entire house was big enough for all to share. The house was built for entertaining.

“My sister even held her engagement party there. We opened all the doors for all the rooms and there were about 50 people and plenty of room for everyone.”

When Mr Walsh died in 2012, Mrs Walsh opted to remain in the house they had cherished together until her final days, Mark said.

It’s a bittersweet sale for Mark and his sister, Anne, who have decided to sell the home they grew up in.

“It’s one of those things that once people move out, it no longer feels like home,” Mark said

“It’s not the great architecture that made it feel like home, it was my parents and now that it’s sitting empty … It’s time for someone else to get the same amount of joy out of it that we once had there.”

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