From Millamolong to Matriarch
‘Never underestimate the restorative power of the Australian bush.’ – Joan Masterman
Joan Masterman’s abiding love of the natural world is knitted into her DNA. Her passion for the Australian landscape was born during an idyllic childhood spent on her family’s sprawling wool station, Millamolong, in central western New South Wales.
Joan and her sister Rosmary at Millamolong, c. 1941
Millamolong was a thriving property, nourished by mineral-rich natural springs and the Belubula river. Joan’s father, Jim Ashton, acquired Millamolong in 1934 and ran it as a cattle and sheep station. A successful grazier, businessman and accomplished polo player, Jim was also captain and manager of a polo team that included his three younger brothers. The young Ashton men excelled at the sport, becoming an unbeatable team in Australia during the 1930s and establishing themselves as a fixture on the international polo calendar. The team hit the peak of their career in 1937 by taking their Australian-bred and trained ponies to England to win the Hurlingham Championship Gold Cup – the highest achievement in international polo in that era.
Joan was born into this pastoral world the following year. Throughout her early life, Millamolong offered the young Joan Ashton unfettered access to a vast backyard of bushland, gardens, pastures, waterholes, and riverbanks, which she enthusiastically explored with her sister and brothers – on foot or in the saddle. As her friend Carol Bett recalls, ‘Joan always talks with great fondness of riding horses wildly over the landscape as a girl, and living that country, station life. She's always been very much an outdoors person.’
Joan’s intense curiosity, her affinity with the outdoors and her enduring desire to simply be outside in the world were all nourished in the wide fields and open skies of Millamolong. These were profoundly formative years that would evolve into a life devoted to protecting and sharing the beauty of Australia’s wild and vulnerable places.
That natural curiosity would eventually lead Joan away from Millamolong to Sydney, where she completed an arts degree at the Sydney University’s Women’s College during the mid-1950s. Her studies – and a roommate who was studying architecture – lit a spark that would later inspire Joan to pursue further qualifications in town planning. It was while studying a Master of Town Planning at Sydney University that Joan met architect Ken Latona – a collaboration that would define ecotourism in Australia, and which would birth Joan’s proudest achievement – Friendly Beaches Lodge and the Freycinet Experience Walk.
Through her adult life, Joan maintained affectionate ties to Millamolong, which remained in the family following the death of her father in 1973. Joan’s younger brother, James, inherited the property, as well as the family polo tradition. James was a successful player in his own right, a renowned breeder of polo ponies, and a prominent figure in the Australian polo community, until his untimely death – the tragic result of a polo accident – in 2010. Millamolong was sold following James’ passing, ending 76 years of continual ownership by the Ashton family. The property remains one of Australia’s oldest operating stations.
Joan’s path would lead her to become a true pioneer of sustainable nature-based experiences in Australia – an accomplishment that has seen her described by journalist Fiona Carruthers in her 2016 Australian Financial Review Magazine feature as ‘the matriarch of ecotourism in Tasmania’. Her services to tourism and conservation would also be recognised with an Order of Australia honour in 2019 ‘for significant service to tourism in Tasmania, and to conservation and the environment’.
Joan Masterman’s connection to nature may have found its fullest expression in her 30-year love affair with Friendly Beaches and the Freycinet Experience Walk. But it began at Millamolong, with a young girl running through the countryside.
