Old Cobargo Convent, review: On a wing and a prayer

Bruce Elder finds a stylish stay at a converted convent in the Bega Valley.

A dormitory once occupied by schoolgirls is now the Blue Room for guest stays at the delightful Old Cobargo Convent, built in 1917 and remarkably well preserved.

It's a solid, post-Federation brick building with a wide verandah, lots of shade, a rose garden, central hallway and beautiful pressed-metal ceilings in all rooms. One end of this former convent houses the family that runs the bed and breakfast; guests share a comfortable lounge room and have a choice of three bedrooms at the front of the building.

The lounge is an ideal place to chat and has old-style sofas and chairs and plenty of reading matter, as well as a large plasma television. All three guests' rooms (one with an adjoining bathroom, the two others with en suites) run off the central hallway.

At the back of the building is a huge kitchen where Josephite nuns cooked for themselves and the boarders. The B&B's owners, Pam and Rob Burgess, serve guests a hearty breakfast: fruit salad and yoghurt, bacon and eggs or pancakes with asparagus, fresh home-baked bread, local butter and home-made jams - in an adjacent dining room.

When the Burgesses recently visited France, they decided to buy a few pieces of period furniture for the property. They got a little carried away and ended up filling a 12-metre container. The decision was aesthetic, as this gracious old building with its spacious rooms and 3.6-metre ceilings deserves interiors in keeping with its elegance. Rob even bought an old Citroen and squeezed it into the container, too.

The furniture enhances the former convent as an ideal base for visitors exploring one of the most interesting and little-known regions of the state. Early settlers on the far south coast used local timber for housing and commercial buildings and Cobargo's main street is a monument to their construction techniques and materials.

Pick up a Village History Walk brochure from the Cobargo Tourist Information Centre (or from the Bermagui Tourist Information Centre, 21 kilometres to the east) and start sauntering; 27 timber-and-brick buildings (including the convent) are listed. Just to make things easier for visitors, the buildings in the centre of town are numbered; so, for example No. 7 at 62 Princes Highway, now a pharmacy, is listed as having been built in 1906 and is "one of the few buildings of that era constructed in brick with pressed-metal ceilings and a marble fireplace". It was originally a solicitor's office.

Just up the road from Cobargo are the beautifully preserved timber towns of Central Tilba and Tilba Tilba and, further along the coast, the remarkable Tathra Wharf. It's a reminder of a time when the main means of transport to the region was by water. From Sydney, ships brought supplies and the mail; from Tathra, ships returned with dairy produce.