A surviving handwritten estate note places early lease, survey and registration of a much larger property around the turn of the century.
Heritage & story
History, wine and wilderness meet here.
Bushman Rock’s archive is not perfectly complete—and the story is stronger for being told with care, evidence and honest qualification.
A living archive
The land keeps more than one kind of record.
Rock paintings hold the longest and most fragile part of the story. The later archive adds handwritten notes, a factory certificate, restoration photographs, magazine features, maps and the memories of people who have lived and worked here.
The website separates verified documents, attributed recollection and uncertain transcription rather than smoothing them into one overly precise narrative.
A working timeline
Fragments that form a longer story.
Dates and ownership details will continue to be owner-checked as the archive is prepared for publication.
The original winery is described in the estate archive as dating from this period, constructed in hand-fired brick.
Factory Registration Certificate No. 3816 records Bushman Rock Farm for the manufacture of wines and fruit juices.
The handwritten history places establishment of the vineyard around the 1990s, although the final digit is uncertain.
Theo Dam was built, with archive photographs recording the core trench and first stages of filling.
The archive records Jonathan Passaportis returning with Australian wine training and taking on full-time winemaking.
The old winery roof was rebuilt while the original brick structure was retained below.
The vineyard, winery, wildlife, hospitality, polo and family story form the foundation of a new estate chapter.
The winery
Old brick, new seasons.
The original winery is described as a 1930s hand-fired brick building. By 1971, the surviving factory certificate formally recorded wine and fruit-juice production at Bushman Rock Farm.
Archive photographs show the 2006 restoration with the older brickwork kept below a carefully rebuilt roof. That act of retaining what could endure while preparing for a new use captures the estate’s wider idea of renewal.
Register interest
Begin with the landscape.
Tell us whether you are considering a private home, a future plot or another part of the Bushman Rock vision.