Cooma Cottage

Cooma Cottage is one of the oldest surviving rural houses in Yass, New South Wales. It has historic significance as a relatively intact complex of rural buildings. It has a variety of significant natural and built elements, including an example of an early tree called the Picconia, a relative of the olive and rare in Australia, which is almost extinct in its native Canary Islands.Cooma Cottage stands as evidence of what the first settlers built for themselves, their families and servants. The handmade bricks and crafted woodwork are the result of local skills and manufacturing. The cottage grew from a bungalow through a series of additions over the 19th century.The cottage has important heritage values as the home of Hamilton Hume for more than 30 years from 1839, after he ended his travels and became a grazier. It is a valuable part of the early development of the merino wool industry in Australia.ArchitectureThe original section of the cottage is among the earliest remaining rural homesteads in New South Wales. To this colonial bungalow Hume added his own version of Palladian style wings and a Greek revival portico. The immediate landscape is virtually unchanged since the 19th century although fast-developing Yass spreads nearby and busy roads have started to intrude.State Heritage ListingCooma Cottage was given a heritage listing in the NSW State Heritage Register on 1 March 2002. The features noted were that the house demonstrates a form, which has grown from a bungalow through a series of additions -idiosyncratic, apparently haphazard, or sophisticated - to be fully united in Palladian form. The variety and juxtaposition of building techniques and materials is exceptional. The house remains within its original unspoilt historic curtilage and retains visual links, and is integral with the adjacent landscape and early properties.