BAKERS DELIGHT
by Tony Troughear
 this article originally appeared in The Newcastle Herald

It's a long story but, briefly, Sam Aboud had a cattle station in the Nambucca Valley, just north of Port Macquarie, that was going nowhere. He took off for Brazil to try ranching, but he didn't fancy it and came back with a wife instead.
Back home, Sam and Irlange scoured the mid-north coast to find a place where they could get away from cattle farming and into some kind of a resort. After a while it hit them - they already had the best place they were ever likely to get. It just needed a bit of work.
Fifteen years and three children later you have to see the place to believe it.
It's like this: you're in the centre of a 405 hectare(1000 acre)station. Hills surround you on all sides, covered in rainforest. In the round valley lies a lake, deep and wide, with a profusion of water lilies in it and gardens surrounding it.
Dotting the hillside are self-contained cabins and by the lake are a small, exclusive restaurant and a big room for games and relaxation.
Down below is a corral where Sam brings the horses when they are not out grazing on the hills or in the forests. Cattle roam the hillsides, too. Sam couldn't give them up, after all.
 That's the bare bones of it. This is what it is really like: We arrive at the gate and drive over the cattle grid. Suddenly there is a vista of round, rolling hills, lying like slaughtered horses. So solid and heavy. Forested valleys run down between them and the road goes on along the top of one of the ridges; still no habitation in sight.
We round a bend and see a large house on a hill some way off. Ah, here's the place, we think. But no, that is Sam and irlange's house. Near it, a little girl (their daughter Lauren) walking by the road, informs us boldly the "daddy is down at the resort" and points ahead.
Just past the house and office we emerge at the top of a very large incline and - whoa!- that is a resort. Photographs cannot fit it all in. It stretches all before us and it's beautiful. The lake shines. Trees of all kinds dapple the bowl of the valley.
We meet Sam and he is instantly likeable. You can tell he is a talker and we listen then and later to a lot of his stories (not all of them suitable for this article - ask him yourself). In fact, Sam is a polymath.
But he installs us in one of the cabins on the hill. It's self-contained, with a kitchen, ensuite and wood heater. And as night settles in and the sun sinks behind the western wall of rainforest hills, everything goes quiet. Very quiet.
Far away some ducks honk briefly and that's it. There's a television but you'd be a fool to switch it on. We drink in the silence of the night and watch from our veranda the swirl of the heavy dew in the autumn air, encapsulated in the miniature grandeur of this home valley of Bakers Creek Station.

In the morning everything is still. The mirror surface of the lake is just beginning to ripple and the orchestra of the bush is stoking up: whip birds, bellbirds, currawongs and whole choir of kookaburras. The valley echoes and focuses them. And in the background a pervasive twittering of small birds.
There is no other sound. No distant hum of traffic. No babble of voices. A kookaburra skims the lake. It feels like dawn will be eternal here, the hot coffee by your side will steam forever. Eleven ridges can be seen from our veranda, running down to the valley floor. This station, for Sam and Irlange a mission, a quest, is for us the renewal of life - the way it was meant to be. Over the next two days we walk, ride and canoe all around this hage and varied place. The gardens and pathways go on and on, the complex system of lakes and billabongs winds through the valley.
This place is so big that not only can you get away from the world here but you can get away from the centre of the station itself. You can walk to the horizon and still be in it.
At midday, from our veranda, a speck in the distance on a far ridge, through the binoculars, turns out to be a lone old horse, grazing slowly and quietly in the midday shade.
A waterhen pecks slowly along the verge of one of the billabongs, not knowing we are spying on it. The birds are skittish here; this is no suburban picnic ground. In the early afternoon a trick of the light turns all the water lily leaves into shining silver. There is so much variety.

And apart from the beautiful Australian plants and animals there are other pleasures. We didn't get around to fishing in the well-stocked lake. And we only went to the Billabong Restaurant once.
This is a world-of-its-own sort of place, With a menu devised, cooked and served by none other than Sam Aboud. I said he was a polymath. As with his horseriding, botany and philosophy, Sam is good at cooking. Don't stand on his small, but comprehensive kitchen garden at the door of the restaurant. These will go with the fish you have doubtless caught in the lake today.
The restaurant is open for outside visitors and recently a group came for lunch, but refused to leave. They were still there at 6pm sitting on the log seats outside near the lake.
There is a lot else to say about Bakers Creek Station, but Sam puts it this way: "Many people try to explain what it's like here, but can't."

Boutique bass at Bakers Creek
Tony Zann
NSW Fishing Monthly

Nestled into the head of a valley in the foothills of the Great Divide inland of Macksville, Bakers Creek Station could best be described as 'boutique' bass fishery--but what a boutique.
If you're tempted at the thought of a private fishery for bass to about 1.5kg in lily-fringed dams set in a stunningly landscaped valley, read on. And if you like the idea of luxurious accommodation within a short cast of the lakes, and fine dining in the classy restaurant with fish swimming only metres away, Bakers Creek Station is for you.

  Both bodies have plenty of lily pads to provide shade, ambush cover and aquatic life for the fish and some interesting casting. While there were few free rises, I had enough willing strikes on my soft surface lure to appreciate what a hot scene this could be on a warm, still summer evening.
Unfortunately, Sam had diligently removed almost the timber before constructing the earthworks for the dam, a move he now somewhat regrets in the light of the additional structure sunken snags would provide. But with all those lily pads and other vegetation to provide cover from predatory birds, it's only a minor thing.

RESTAURANT DELIGHTS

So generous were the servings that we had no room for dessert, although the blackboard menu announced a whole heap of goodies to force down, including sticky date pudding wattle seed caramel sauce. The menu also announced that this was a top place to eat, with prime local meats and seafood accompanied by sauces with distinctively bush-tucker flavours. Hmm, this is starting to sound like the Good Food Lover's guide to Bass Fishing.

But BCS isn't just for high rollers--you can cook in your villa's excellent kitchen or you can even pitch a tent and set up a campfire--it's just a great place to have fun the way you'd like to.

Additional attractions include a games room with pool table and table tennis, a tennis court, a golf driving range, 15 acre of gardens with many trees and plants labelled, miles of walking trails and clear, soft waer in the lakes for swimming and a pontoon to laze on. Bakers Creek Station also offers horse riding on many kilometres of lowland and mountain trails. Then, of course, there's always the original Pub With No Beer at Taylors Arm, a few kilometres down the road.

Article By DENNIS PASSA
Associated Press Writer

TAYLORS ARM, Australia (AP) When the bottom dropped out of the beef market, Sam Aboud decided to try mustering tourists at his Bakers Creek cattle station.

Now visitors seeking tranquility and a rest from their cell phones -- coverage doesn't extend to Aboud's rural oasis --are heading to his hidden valley.

The entrance to Bakers Creek Station looks like any other sprawling property along a winding, dusty road about half an hour's drive off Australia's busy Pacific Highway: a Texas-style cattle gate sunk into the ground to keep the cows in and an old milk can as a mailbox.

After driving down the path and beyond the home of Sam and his Brazilian-born wife Irlange, the reason why the Abouds decided to create their small resort becomes apparent.

A sloping road with steep drop-offs leads visitors into a 1,000-acre (403-hectare) valley with a man-made 18-acre (7.5-hectare) lake stocked with fish, decorated with native Australian flora --most of them planted by Aboud himself--and rolling hills, some with rain forests, as a backdrop.

To complete the picture, Aboud built six well-appointed cabins and two bunkhouses, a games room that features snooker and table tennis, a tennis court, canoes on the lake, fishing rods for the willing and a cozy restaurant.

There are no televisions or telephones in the rooms and no mobile phone towers for miles, so anyone looking for a complete break from the hectic pace of life can find it -- 475 kilometers (295 miles) north of Sydney, a comfortable 5 1-2-hour drive.

"We call it our hidden valley," says Aboud, who gave up on the cattle business about 15 years ago.

After scouring Australia for a suitable site for a small-scale tourist venture, Aboud finally realized he was already sitting on it.

"We knew what we wanted to do, but we wanted a good location," said Aboud. "We looked all over the place, then realized we had everything we wanted right here -- no through roads or neighbors, and a catchment area for a lake."

Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, Aboud created the lake now stocked with bass and perch-- he offers a free fish dinner in his restaurant to any "accomplished" fisherman who doesn't catch one from the lake.

Aboud, who studied horticulture, planted most of the trees on the property grown in his own nursery. The jack-of-all-trades even cooks the meals in the restaurant, saying he gave up about 18 months ago on "chefs who didn't really want to work."

The maximum capacity at Bakers Creek Station is 24 guests, but Aboud will soon build two new cabins to increase the load to 32 in an attempt to improve his small conference business. Midweek visits in the offseason could result in guests having the resort to themselves.

"We don't mind either way," says Aboud. "We have periods here when we are extremely busy and don't stop for days."

Cabins featuring queen-size beds, a CD player, wood stove, fully equipped kitchen and a large verandah that overlooks the lake makes the going even easier.

The privacy is delightful -- nothing but the sounds of birds and the intermittent braying of a donkey, interrupted only by a visit to the cabin from "chef" Aboud about an hour before dinner to go over that evening's menu.

Two hours later, wholesome steamed vegetables and Aboud's special grilled bruschetta is served ahead of lamb rack with Davidson plum sauce from the station's fruit trees. He also grows his owns herbs and incorporates fruit from native trees and bushes on the property into the Billabong Restaurant menu that also includes fish and steak.

Aboud started the resort as a horse-riding operation, buying a dozen horses and saddles to offer scenic escorted rides in the region. He continues to offer the horse outings, including a two-hour ride up steep terrain and valleys that take in a good chunk of the property.

The closest community of Taylors Arm has the famous "Pub with No Beer," but very little in the way of groceries. The Pub with No Beer, less commonly known as the 1903-built Cosmopolitan Hotel, was made famous in a song by legendary Australian country singer Slim Dusty, who lamented that wartime beer rations and the community's thirst for the brew had combined to force the pub to regularly run out of beer.