Fodor's Expert Review Martindale Hall

Just outside the slate-mining hamlet of Mintaro, 10 km (6 miles) southeast of Sevenhill, wealthy bachelor Edmund Bowman built this gracious 32 room manor house in 1879—as legend has it, to lure his fiancée from England to the colonies. He failed, but continued to spend lavishly. In 1891 a near-bankrupt Bowman sold the grand house to the Mortlock family, who in 1965 willed it—and its contents—to the University of Adelaide. Now privately leased, Martindale Hall is a museum of late-19th- and early-20th-century rural life, filled with the Mortlocks' books, beds, furniture, crockery, glassware, and billiard table, The house, which is open for self-guided tours, was featured in director Peter Weir's first film, Picnic at Hanging Rock.