It was built for boarding house operator, significant land owner and orchardist Bartholomew Rush to facilitate transport of his fruit to Sydney and for the convenience of his guests.

As a young man living at Parramatta in the 1830s, ‘Bat’ Rush had been well known as an invincible amateur short-distance runner.

With his wife Anne he moved to Nattai in the Southern Highlands in 1853 where he became a landowner of considerable importance and wealth. Eventually, as will be related later, he lost it all.

His boarding house, formerly the Prince Albert Inn on the Great Southern Road, was a mere 400 metres from the railway platform.

He purchased 460 acres of nearby land, spanning both sides of the road.

The railway was built across a part of his land.

Rush advertised his boarding house in Sydney papers as the Family Hotel, advising that the train stopped daily at the platform to take up and put down passengers.

He also advised gentlemen desirous of leaving their horses and vehicles at his place while in town, that every care and attention would be shown, particularly as he had the best stabling and grass paddocks on the Southern Road.

In 1869 a visitor to Rush’s hotel, renamed The Willows, described it as follows:

“On a gentle eminence is the house, surrounded by out-buildings and gardens.

“At the back of this establishment, largely patronised by Sydney invalids of the more wealthy classes, are cultivated fields and open land; the forest extending itself in an unbroken line, along the brow of the hill and sheltering this agreeable sanatorium, called The Willows, from the large trees which are thickly grouped around the main building.”

“A more healthful, quiet, and attractive locality can scarcely be imagined. In front of the house is the railway, beyond which is a tract of woodland in which hills, rocks, lakelets and waterfalls vary the general monotony of an Australian forest.”

Rush is said to have had one of the finest orchards in NSW, his apples being well known on the Sydney market.

His wife Anne died in 1875, aged 46, having given birth to eight sons and two daughters, several of whom died at a young age.

In 1876 Rush built a fine residence, Braemar Lodge, opposite The Willows on the western side of the Southern Road. It was named after a town and castle in Scotland. Initially single storeyed, it was added to in later years.

Rush married his second wife Sarah Riley in 1879 and soon two more children were added to his large family.

Meanwhile, Rush’s business interests were expanding.

He won lucrative government contracts to erect the first telegraph lines and telegraph houses linking country centres to Sydney including the Bourke, Albury and Lismore lines.

He also won contracts for fencing along the Great Southern Railway.

He paid the men working for him in gold and silver coin.

Did this attract bushrangers?