Luxury 7-bedroom estate with private golf course for sale in Northern Victoria

The picturesque bend of a big river, on a country property in the far north of Victoria, is the setting for this singular story – fairways, festivities and a family of go-getters at its captivating heart.

Welcome to Clarendon Eyre, 352 kilometres north-east of Melbourne, a stroll from the mighty Murray River and far and away one of the more extraordinary properties you’re ever likely to see.

Private Sale - $8,000,000-$8,800,000

185 Morgans Mill Road, Bearii VIC 3641

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“Driving in to Bearii, you’re passing paddock after paddock,” says Forbes Global Property’s Nathan Verwoert. “It’s all livestock or crops and maybe, in the distance, a far-off farmhouse. Then, at the end of a gravel road, you come to this incredibly lush green – it’s just phenomenal.”

Across 20 years, Ken Miller and his family have created what must seem to some like a mirage on the Murray. Around 16 of the 105 hectares here have been transformed into a stunning five-hole golf course that wraps around the elegant white timber homestead. A shimmering turquoise ornamental lake is the show-stopping centrepiece almost beyond imagining.

Miller’s son, Josh, says the intent was never to build a golf course here; it grew out of the family’s camping trips to the river and their growing love of boats and motorbikes.

“Dad looked for a place on the river where we would be able to ride our bikes. When he bought it, there were a few sand-scrape golf holes on the property. Dad’s a green thumb, loves his horticulture and his grass, and he thought, ‘Why don’t I have a crack at building a proper green?’’

What started out as one hole quickly became another and another until there were five pristine Santa Ana couch grass fairways, edged in gloriously perfect sandy bunkers with Mackenzie Bent greens like little scattered emeralds.

“It sort of naturally evolved more than anything,” says Josh, offering the artificial lake, developed from the dirt excavated for a bike track, as another example of the somewhat organic origins of what presents today as resplendent and resort-like.

Perhaps there’s something in the very atmosphere here that fosters such alchemy. Josh Miller met entrepreneur, social media star, and co-founder of the KIC fitness app Steph Claire Smith when she was 12 years old and he was 15.

“She was quite literally the girl next door,” he laughs, of Steph’s own family property just around the bend from the Millers.

They grew up together, fell in love and married, all at the farm. “It really is just an incredible place. To be able to say I met my wife here, that I’ve got a golf course, it’s pretty surreal,” he says.

Surreal might also be the most apt description of that stunning blue lake in the middle of all that glorious green.

The incredible luminescence is achieved by dispersing a dye, similar to old-fashioned pool granules – just a cup or two – across the surface of the water.

“The best thing about it,” says Josh, “Is that you can go in with a white t-shirt and come out the other side, still with a white t-shirt.”

While the incomparable surroundings here are undoubtedly the focus, the homestead itself has a terrific origin story too.

The handsome home boasts bay windows and big verandahs and looks, for all the world, like a classic country manor. It is, in fact, two separate houses, trucked up to the banks of the river to form one superb spread.

A pretty weatherboard carried its name, Clarendon Eyre, all the way from Malvern to the Murray. When it was joined by the old Mornington Art Gallery, a seven-bedroom, five-bathroom beauty was born.

“We’ve gut renovated the house, fully modified it twice,” says Josh. “It’s been a continuous process of improvement for both the golf course and house over almost 20 years.”

You don’t have to be a golf nut to revel in this place. The home’s interiors are all contemporary elegance, anchored in the beautiful use of timber and stone, and leavened by the bountiful country light.

Just to sit inside those big bay windows looking out over the green would be a simple balm for the soul. There’s a suitably moody cinema room to add to the atmospheric amenity, as well as a splendid bar window opening out to the swimming pool. A tennis court has its own little stone pergola, should you want to swap the seven-iron for the strings.

The Millers leave behind a stunning legacy; quite simply, a place unlike any other, with the bonus of what just may be a little romance floating in the atmospheric riverside air.

What the agent says

“It’s completely, distinctly different. One of only one. It really is your playground. Go as far as your imagination might take you. Everything is included. Take the keys and enjoy.”