Welcome to my first 28 gates blog post....have been contemplating this for about 3 years and thanks goes to our awesome new 'web developers', Kingthing Marketing for encouraging me to 'take the plunge', so here it is.... We are so proud and excited to have our new website go live.....a lot of work has gone into it and hope you all like it....happy days and a huge thank you to Kingthing Marketing from Launceston, I highly recommend this formidable team!

So I thought I would start with explaining how 28 gates came about. Go back about 8-9 years ago, I have always been interested in Tourism and had been researching it for awhile. Friends had said to us how our place was special, great fishing, private and not far from Hobart, so we thought, 'we need to scratch the itch'!

28 Gates - orignal photo — 1940's

This is an original photo of 28 gates, men loading the wheat and chaff. If only I could find a photo of the horses in the stables..... A big transformation to what it is today!

The original 28 gates building was a horse stables and grain lofts built in 1936 and then in 1967 fires swept through the property destroying the original shearers quarters, so hastily the stables were converted to shearers quarters. The building then was empty and used as storage and a home for possums, mice, birds and rats for about 20 years, as our shearers and team travel as they live locally. Our thoughts were, 'should we bulldoze it or do something with the building'...obviously we chose the latter. It took about 2 years of slow renovations (we were in no hurry) to complete and happy with the end product.

We opened in November 2011 and haven't looked back. Lots of new beginnings, positives,a few negatives and lots of fun and laughter and most of all, we so enjoy what we do....we love meeting our guests, showing them our property and giving them a taste of country life.

28 Gates - dogs — Why 28 gates?

Oh, I should mention why we came up with 28 gates....no, you don't have to open 28 gates (we wouldn't do that to you!). Well its not easy coming up with a name and a good friend said to us, 'you have to think outside the square' so both Michael and I were sitting at the kitchen table and he said 'I wonder how many gates we have?'. He counted them up and there were 168, bit of a mouthful but we have 28 paddocks and 28 gates around the perimeter of the property, so 28 gates it was....

I hope you follow us on the journey and if there are any questions you would like to ask....I am here. Many topics will be covered and it will also be a forum for specials, whats happening on the farm and in the beautiful area too. If you have any topics that you would like me to discuss, let me know. Enjoy and hope to see you soon

Susie

First ever blog...Welcome!