3170 Lilydale Road, Chidlow WA 6556

Love at first sight doesn't begin to capture it. Set behind an avenue of tall, smooth-trunked gums, this extraordinary property is a rare mix of whimsy, atmosphere and exceptional setting, its gardens bursting into bloom and giving way to natural bush that leads directly onto a bridle trail. The verandah is twined with cascading wisteria, while poolside a climbing rose keeps company with a second wisteria, its tendrils ascending a nearby eucalypt. Jasmine grows beside the jacaranda that anchors one corner, and open pasture tumbles away from a shady front deck. The further you wander, the greater the delight - hidden patios and terraces, a self-contained guesthouse, and a below-ground pool, all set within almost ten acres of gardens and grounds where children will find a magical playground and adults will feel their shoulders drop before they reach the front door. Here, everything quietens, thoughts unspool, and the everyday world feels pleasantly, properly far away.

3 bed 1 bath homestead
1979-built brick and iron
Wrap-around verandahs
Timber floor, bespoke cabs
Exp beams, lined ceiling
Stand-alone guest studio 1x1
Wisteria-draped pool
Garage, sheds, chicken run
Almost 10 acres of rural bliss

Step onto the wrap-around verandah, and there's always somewhere right for the moment - a paved patio to catch the last of the sun, a deck for evening drinks, a stretch of lawn for a toddler to practice their wobbly first steps. From the verandah you step straight into an open-plan living area, where the family room, kitchen and dining flow together as one easy, sociable space. Pine-lined ceilings and exposed beams lift the room and give it a real sense of scale, while a slow combustion fireplace turns up the cosiness through the cooler months and split-system air conditioning takes care of summer. Whichever room you're in, the verandah is never far - a door, a window, a sightline - keeping the garden constantly, quietly present. It's the kind of house where the seasons announce themselves: woodsmoke and a closed door in winter, every window thrown open by October.

The kitchen is a lesson in building for your setting. A large bay window faces east over garden and lawn, pulling light deep into the room through the morning - the sort of window you find yourself standing at with a coffee, watching the wrens go about their business before the day properly starts. Raw-edged jarrah benchtops, thick and jewel-toned, set the tenor for cabinetry around the electric oven and dishwasher, and the same respect for natural materials shows up in an exposed brick wall edged with mini orb along one side of the open-plan space. Tucked into the home's north-west corner, the dining area catches dappled light and garden views that do at least as much for the appetite as the food does - long lunches here are less a plan than an inevitability.

Timber floors run the length of the central hallway, with wainscoting and pine panelling carrying the warmth of the living areas through the rest of the house. Three bedrooms open off the hall, each carpeted and fitted with a ceiling fan, the two guest rooms with built-in robes; a family bathroom and a generous mudroom complete this wing. The principal suite has its own split-system air conditioning, a fitted walk-in robe, and a door straight onto the east verandah - about as good as it gets for a coffee before the day gets going, the garden still cool and a little damp with dew. Bespoke joinery in marri - a now rare timber - fits out the family bathroom, its warm honey tones set against a walk-in shower, vanity and WC. The same craftsmanship echoes in the mudroom/laundry, where a raw-edge jarrah bench recalls the kitchen benchtops, alongside a second WC and a good-sized broom closet with iron hardware. It's a small, unshowy detail, but the kind that tells you someone thought about how this house would actually be lived in, not just how it would look.

From the east verandah, a lawn leads to the pool, its surround threaded through with wisteria and a climbing rose - it's easy to lose an hour reading out here without noticing the time go by. At one edge of the lawn, a single jade-green agate at the top of a flight of mosaic steps marks the start of a winding path - the sound of a small fountain, sitting beside the guesthouse door, drawing you on - to the guesthouse itself: timber-framed windows and doors, an elevated front deck, and a polished exposed-aggregate floor, cool and smooth underfoot as you step inside. The single room is large and welcoming, with a kitchenette, a lounge area and a door out to a terrace paved in recycled brick, complete with slab seating and a fire pit looking out over open paddock - somewhere for visiting family to settle in, or an adult child to have their own patch of independence without ever really leaving. A separate corrugated-iron structure above the guesthouse houses a walk-in shower, WC and vanity, the shower with a view worth lingering for.

There's a flock of chickens currently in residence, their yard shaded by a citrus tree and a plum tree with a passionfruit vine on the fence, and - because no Perth Hills property is complete without one - a mulberry tree grows elsewhere on the block, ripe for picking each summer, sticky fingers and purple mouths all but guaranteed. Bore-fed reticulation extends to the gardens and the chicken run; in addition to a bore tank, tanks collect rainwater from the roof of the house and guesthouse. A two-car garage provides undercover parking, and a nearby level pad is ready for a boat, trailer, van, or bus, or could be the start of a new workshop (subject to approval). Further across the grounds are a machinery shelter/woodshed and an old train carriage, both part of the property's own, slightly eccentric history - the kind of thing that evokes or inspires a story every time someone new visits.

Fully fenced at the boundary and gated at the road, the land beyond the house, studio and outbuildings is left largely as it is - natural bush, a gate at the rear opening to a bridle trail that runs for kilometres through reserve toward Wooroloo, and further again to Wundowie. Saddle up, and you're on the trail within minutes, the light still soft and the house already out of sight behind you.

Chidlow township - shops, pub, post office, café and primary school - is a few minutes away, with Lake Leschenaultia, the local favourite for a swim, a walk or a picnic, not much further again. And yet for all that's close at hand, it's a rare thing: a property with this much room to move, and this little reason to leave it.

To arrange an inspection of this property, call Jo Sheil - 0422 491 016.