Tentatively, I prise back the pendulous overhanging branches and peek inside the natural umbrella of the weeping beech.
Ahhh. Lovely. It's a good 20 degrees cooler than outside in the bright summer sunshine. As I take another step towards the tree's twisted trunk, a rustling sound startles me. I spin around just in time to see the last of the branches, which reach all the way to the ground, close behind me like a giant green curtain.
It's as if I've entered an empty circus tent.
Thirty years older than similar specimens in Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens, this magnificent beech (Fagus sylvatica 'pendula') at Milton Park Country House Hotel & Spa on the outskirts of Bowral is regarded by drooling horticulturalists as one of the oldest and best outside of Europe.
And it's clear why. Planted in the early 1900s around the time when grazier, stock breeder and retailer Anthony Hordern bought this sprawling Southern Highlands estate, it is truly a sight to behold.
However, craning my neck to peer even higher up into the canopy I can't help but wonder about another remarkable tree synonymous with the Hordern family.
Back in the 1800s, Hordern's family founded the Anthony Hordern & Sons Department Store in Sydney. It became a retail icon, and it was recognised as the largest department store in the world in 1905, when it was housed in the six-storey Palace Emporium building between the corners of Pitt, George, and Goulburn streets. Really!
One of the store's advertising slogans was that it sold "anything from a needle to an anchor". Meanwhile, its trademark was a budding oak tree combined with the motto "While I live, I'll grow". The striking logo appeared above all the store's windows and on all its stationery. You could even buy souvenir plates featuring the distinctive logo.
Those who travelled the old Hume Highway between Canberra and Sydney last century may recall driving past a Port Jackson fig (planted in 1866) perched atop Razorback Range (near Picton) that bore an uncanny resemblance to the oak tree on the Horderns logo. If you saw it, you wouldn't forget it.
In fact, the tree was so similar to the logo that in the 1920s the Horderns erected a billboard by the tree. It fast became one of the most recognised landmarks on the Hume Highway.
Unlike the Razorback tree, which succumbed to a storm in 1974, the weeping beech at Milton Park has flourished and as I continue to admire it, I can't help but wonder how many others have paused to stand beneath it, completely encircled by its dangling branches.
One thing is for sure, I'm the first today. Here to celebrate a milestone birthday, Mrs Yowie and I have the country house, now a 50 or so room five-star hotel, virtually to ourselves. And boy, do we love it.
Boasting a multitude of open fires, peak season for canoodling couples here is the depths of winter, so it's all but deserted for our mid-summer sojourn.
It's as if the staff are just here to serve us - just like Hordern and his well-heeled mates would have been pandered to back in the houses' heyday of the 1920s.
While the handful of other guests selflessly head off to peruse the antique shops of nearby Berrima and Bowral, we don't budge all weekend. High tea on the terrace, pre-dinner drinks in the polo bar and long dinners in the Orangerie. Divine. Heck, even the breakfast buffet - usually a feeding zoo at most hotels - is a tranquil oasis.
As for those piles of glossy magazines featuring mansions of the rich and famous with designer pools and inspiring gardens, often commonplace in such hotels - we push them to the side. Why read about it when you can live it?
On one garden stroll, between the carriage house and the tennis courts we discover the knock-out conservatory-style indoor heated pool encased in a vine-laced stone building with arched windows. It's the sort of place you'd expect Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby from Midsomer Murders to stride out of the mist to investigate the drowning of a highfalutin socialite. However, the only clues he'd find today are a few wayward splashes left on the pool deck by my clumsy tumble turns.
Given the olde-worlde vibe of Milton Park, it's not surprising a ghost supposedly wanders the gardens. C'mon, how could your Akubra-clad columnist celebrate a milestone birthday without a little paranormal moonlighting on the side?
"Mary usually likes to hand out phantom taps on the shoulders, sometimes in the dining room but more often than not in the garden," deadpans our attentive waitress.
So, who is Mary? Well, she was Mary Bullmore Packer (yes, a relative of that Packer family), Hordern's second wife who is responsible for the long curves and sweeping vistas of the gardens.
According to local lore, "Mary committed few plans to paper and often had trees in full-bloom man-handled from point to point until the most appropriate final position became apparent." Ghost or no ghost, what a wonderful job she did. I'll drink to that. Another Pimm's and lemonade please.
We're already saving our pennies for a return visit next year. But a word of warning, if you're planning your own escape to Milton Park, please make sure it's in winter, for I'm not sure we want to share our summer retreat with others. In the meantime, I might even consult a swim coach to work on those tumble turns.
If you go to Milton Park
It's all in a name. There are two versions of how Milton Park was named.
The first is that, shortly after purchasing the property, then called Mansfield Park, in 1910, Anthony Hordern took a cursory glance at his bookshelf and seeing the word Milton on the spine of a copy of Paradise Lost immediately changed the name of his new property. For the great unwashed (yes, that includes me), Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. The second version is somewhat less romantic and suggests Hordern named it after the NSW south coast town of Milton, which was founded by his grandfather John Booth.
Garden: The original gardens were designed by the English School of Landscape, the only work undertaken outside of Europe by that esteemed academy. Today, apart from the weeping beeches, there are more than 5000 maples; several hundred rhododendron and camellias; nearly 400 metres of box hedge surrounding 400 rose bushes; and an avenue of elms.
Look out for: Taking pride of place in the guest courtyard is a stately chiming bronze fountain that was plucked from a Paris park and brought all the way here by the current owners. Meanwhile, the two giant urns on the Beech and Cedar Lawns were transported from Margam, Hordern's uncles' estate in Wales.
What happened to the Palace Emporium? It was controversially demolished in the 1980s to make way for the World Square development.
Did You Know: Another of the Hordern clan, Samuel, established Retford Park, a grand home only a few kilometres from Milton Park, and which was subsequently donated to the National Trust (NSW) by the late James Fairfax. Although you can't bunk down at Retford Park, there are regular open days and a state-of-the-art gallery that sustainably repurposes the property's Dairy and Veterinary Clinic. Well worth a visit.
WHERE IN THE REGION?
Rating: Medium
Cryptic Clue: Going batty
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email sent after 10am, Saturday, February 4, wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Michael Hall, of Hawker, who was the first to identify last week's photo (inset) as the service station at Candelo on the south coast. "We recently had lunch at the town's excellent café and so it was easy to recognise the garage and the park in your picture," writes Michael, who just beat Roger Shelton, of Spence, Jaron Bailey, of Waramanga, and Janis Norman, of Spence, to the prize.
SPOTTED
Now for a different take on this column's occasional series on "trees that eat things".
While fighting the North Black Range fire near Tallaganda during the Black Summer fires, David Hanzl noticed this bulldozer.
"I wonder how long it was parked there?" he muses. Any guesses?
SIMULACRA CORNER
While exploring Carwoola on the weekend, I noticed this giant skippy. Despite its out-of-the-way location on far-flung Woolcara Lane, several readers over the years have sent me photos of it, including this one by Christina Steele, of Captains Flat. "It looks just like a roo on its haunches surveying the landscape," she says.
