The Barn at Stonewalls began its life in Connecticut in 1840 — a working timber barn that stood for over a century before Andrew O'Brien found it, dismantled it, and brought it to Musk. Rebuilt using the original hand-hewn timbers and supplemented with wood reclaimed from the Stonewalls property itself, with architecture by Tandem Studio, it is one of the most unusual and considered spaces in regional Victoria. The soul is entirely Andrew's.
Inside, the scale surprises you. Soaring A-frame ceilings open above a generous open-plan living space — warm timber, original stone walls, and Andrew O'Brien's large-scale artworks hung throughout. The kitchen is built around a classic AGA alongside a top-of-the-range Gaggenau oven, with generous marble benchtops and the kind of culinary setup that makes you want to cook. The dining table seats eight.
The bookshelves hold a personal collection of art objects gathered by Andrew across decades of travel through the Indo-Pacific — ceramics, curiosities, singular things. Alongside them: an extensive library of art books and a comprehensive film collection, viewable on two Samsung screens. This is not a short-stay mindset. This is a place built for long evenings, slow mornings, and the particular pleasure of having nowhere you need to be.
The Barn itself is beautifully appointed and had a lovely ambiance.
The gorgeous barn was only outdone by the spectacular grounds.
The living room of The Barn is a place designed for one thing above all others — to slow you down completely. The wood fire stove draws you in, the deep sofas hold you, and the afternoon light through the steel-framed windows does the rest.
Andrew is a collector of great chairs. Settle into an original Eames LCW — its moulded plywood still one of the most considered forms in modern design — or take a seat in a Bertoia Wire Chair, the sculpted steel basket that changed how we thought about sitting. These are not decorative objects. They are here to be used.
Presiding over the room is The Salt Lake — a monumental work from Andrew O'Brien's own collection. Its scale and warmth fill the space, shifting with the light through the day. Pick up a book. Pour a glass. The fire doesn't need tending just yet.
The kitchen and living room at The Barn exist as one continuous space — open, unhurried, designed for the kind of day that begins with coffee at the island and ends with wine at the table long after the plates are cleared.
At the centre sits a dining table made by Andrew from timber sourced from the Stonewalls forest — solid, heavy, worn beautifully with use. Around it, two Thonet 209 Bentwood Armchairs and four Bertoia Diamond chairs: a century of considered design pulled up to the same table. It seats eight. It rarely feels like enough.
Anchoring the kitchen is a classic AGA — cream enamel, always warm — alongside a Gaggenau oven for when precision matters. The marble island runs long and generous. The blackened timber wall above holds blue-and-white plates collected across decades of travel through the Indo-Pacific, alongside copper pans and ceramic vessels that earn their place by being used.
This is not a kitchen designed for show. It is a kitchen designed for cooking in, eating in, and staying in well past the point you intended to leave.
The loft bedroom sits high inside the original A-frame — original hand-hewn Connecticut timbers rising above you on both sides, converging at the ridge like a cathedral built for two. Over 50 square metres of private space, entirely still, entirely yours. The kind of room you don't leave until you're absolutely ready.
At its heart is a king bed dressed in Egyptian cotton and a Sleeping Duck mattress — the kind of sleep you can't quite explain to people who haven't had it. The plaid throw at the foot of the bed, the soft reading light, the coffee and open book on the pillow in the morning: these are not details that happen by accident. They are the point.
The blue-grey panelled headboard wall runs the full width of the loft, anchoring the space with quiet authority. To one side, a timber bookshelf holds a curated library — art, travel, fiction — alongside objects gathered from decades of living with curiosity. To the other, Samsung's The Frame sits unobtrusively on its studio stand, for when the evening calls for something cinematic.
A study desk built under the staircase holds a designer lamp and two framed works from the collection. The rocking chair in the reading corner catches the morning light. The shell chandelier glows softly below. This is the last thing you see before you sleep, and the first thing that reminds you where you are when you wake.
The bathroom at The Barn is entirely pink — blush ceramic tiles floor to ceiling, Carrara marble underfoot, and a backlit arch mirror that turns the act of getting ready into something close to ceremony. It is a room designed with complete conviction, and it rewards that confidence entirely.
A large rain shower occupies the glass-enclosed wet room, with black steel framing that echoes the steel windows of the barn itself. The vanity is solid timber, the basin a simple white vessel, the tapware matte black throughout. Aesop amenities. Heated towel rail. Luxury robes for two, hanging from the wall alongside a Balinese mask from Andrew's Indo-Pacific collection — perhaps the only bathroom in Victoria where ancient ritual and rain showers share the same wall.
Step through the steel and ribbed-glass door from the main space and the bathroom announces itself as a destination rather than an afterthought. Unhurried mornings were made for rooms like this.
The botanic gardens at Stonewalls are not a backdrop. They are the reason the property exists — conceived, planted and obsessively refined by Andrew O'Brien over more than two decades, in collaboration with award-winning architects Tandem Studio. Ten distinct garden rooms unfold across 25 private acres: a reflecting pond that mirrors the sky at golden hour, stone-walled rooms planted with rare botanicals, a pergola draped in wisteria, and a forest walk to the edge of the Musk Valley. The Walled Kitchen Garden — the largest of its kind in Victoria — grows vegetables, herbs and flowers for the table.
The estate sits within one of the most biodiverse wildlife corridors in the Central Highlands. You don't arrange any of this — it simply arrives. Wedge-tailed eagles ride the morning thermals overhead. Kookaburras announce dusk from the tree line, unfailingly. Superb fairy-wrens dart through the beds in their impossible blue; black cockatoos sweep in from the forest and stop everything when they do.
On the ground: eastern grey kangaroos graze the lower paddocks as the light drops, wombats work the garden's edge after dark, and the manna gums at the forest boundary hold a resident koala population. The 2km forest walk takes you through their territory. Go quietly.