The Sanctuary 2580, New South Wales

The Sanctuary's a rugged & beautiful, biodiverse, timeless land of ~500 acres. We are 2.5hrs - Sydney, 1.3hrs - Canberra & 25mins - Goulburn.

Access to The Sanctuary is currently best-suited to a 4WD, tradies ute or light truck... although I get in with a 2WD light truck with good luggy rear tyres.

The main valley at The Sanctuary, which visitors also travel down to get to the property is also the catchment for George's Creek (as it was on maps in the 1890s)

The upper valley is an open uplands floodplain & aquifer recharge zone, with native grasses & herbs, part of a grassy box woodlands ecosystem, with a rich biodiversity incl superb lyrebirds, red & yellow-tailed black cockatoos, sulfur-crested & gang gang cockatoos, owls, possums, echidnas, roos, wallabies, wombats & goannas, wild deer etc.. There’s 5 different sorts of ecosystems on & surrounding The Sanctuary, which in the bigger picture of southeast Australia, all of them endangered due to post-European invasion widespread clearing & climate change.

If you look carefully down the eastern side of the upper main valley, you'll find several amazing volcanic pumice-like rock formations that have withstood the geological timescale erosion of the surrounding shale-like rock.

This is a large property, but we only use the most accessible ~5-10%, leaving the rest & the wildlife undisturbed. Our boundaries/fences are a bit longer than your average suburban block. The northern fence-line is 2.1 kms long, western ~800m, eastern 1 kms, and southern boundary which is also Jerrara Creek, ~5.6kms.

Our elevation ranges from ~590-~768m or 810m above sea-level (depending on which map and survey you believe). This means our nights, even in summer are mostly cool, and in mid-winter 2019, Blue Wren Springs campsite (now closed) got down to ~9.1 ºC. due to climate change certainly a lot warmer than winters 30-40 years ago, getting down to ~15ºC. 

There are fire trails you can walk up to our highest points of Mount Anne, and Mount William. Or you could also walk up the Mt Marulan Firetrail to the survey trig point, we prefer you to walk around The Sanctuary and the locals would prefer you don’t drive up to Mt Marulan.

A key part of our mission at The Sanctuary is environmental & climate change science education, ecofootprint & environmental governance work with forward-thinking companies, regenerative catchment management, & broadacre Permaculture design & consultancy work.

Currently no power, drinking water, toilets or any facilities at all. It's for the self-contained visitor wanting to hang a billy over a fire pit & sizzle sausages over hot coals. Well-behaved dogs welcome, but must be under control at all times!

We welcome kids & well behaved dogs, include & respect diversity in most of its forms, including: - cultures, languages, religions & ethnicities, & neurodiverse, ASD, Rainbow/LGBTIQ, (self-sufficient) differently-abled families.

But mutual respect for People & Planet is non-negotiable.

There is currently NO Camping at The Sanctuary due to Council compliance orders and some diligent whingeing fool.

Your visit to The Sanctuary helps us fund the costs of owning the property, paying the rates, & environmental custodianship, including carrying out environmental management, including weed control, fencing, & healing the land via regenerative agriculture, tree planting, stopping soil & gully erosion, etc

For low income families we discount the visitor fee and negotiate barter in some sort of farm work :-)

Please like our FB page The Sanctuary 2580, but all comms & bookings via the good folks at HipCamp, as they take the hardwork out of websites, payments, insurance etc, making it so much easier for us busy hosts ! :-)