Goulburn property market boosted by string of high end sales

Goulburn’s high-end housing market scored a fillip, when historic 1861-built residence Hurstville sold for a record $2.15 million late last week.

The grand country house tops previous Goulburn highs of $1.15 million, set when outgoing local MP Pru Goward bought her home Pineleigh in 2013, and last year’s more recent high of $1.8 million, set by poultry farmer Ed Wehbe and his wife Lauren.

Sydney-based owners Peter Caucino and Yvonne Aris bought the property from the Uniting Church in 2004 for $660,000 when it was six rundown apartments.

What followed was a painstaking restoration by the couple over more than three years, using original photos and returning it to a single residence for the first time in 80 years, according to Ray White Goulburn’s Justin Gay.

The five-bedroom residence, with five separate living areas and two studies with ornate finishes throughout, is set on 2567 square metres.

Hurstville was built for Anne Hurst, widow of Methodist Minister, The Reverend Benjamin Hurst, who died in 1857.

Anne Hurst later married Sydney alderman John Caldwell, and after she died in 1886 the property was subdivided and the residence sold off.

In 1904 it was bought by Russell Edward Conolly, a foundation member of the Goulburn Chamber of Commerce and one of the first members of the Goulburn Golf Club, who renamed the property Bulwarra.

By 1937 it was advertised as Bulwarra Flats, and decades later bequeathed to the Uniting Church by Maggie Davies.

Mr Gay said the buyer was a family from Stubbo, in the Central Tablelands, about 40 kilometres north of Mudgee.