You are invited to our Music in the Mazes event!

What is it?

Family, friends, and foodie-themed, the Music in the Mazes @ the Purple House Forest Estate brings together all good things in life: music, food, wine, fun, and relaxation in a Forest Bath setting.

What can you expect?

This outdoor ‘mini festival’ in Forth has a holiday atmosphere with live music from Chester Drawer and the Low Boys, free entrance to mazes and labyrinths, endless stretches of Forth River shore, and beautiful forest settings.

Alchemy Catering and Love Your Guts kitchen will be cooking up a storm, offering all your favourites with tacos, chips, burgers, sausages & sauerkraut, oliebollen and more.

Showcasing local Swinging Gate wines and Spreyton Ciders.

Why?

Our Forest Estate is like a big playground for adults and children alike.

Normally only open to our private clients, guests, or kids and grandkids, we now want to give EVERYONE a chance to spend the day in ‘paradise’!

When

Sunday the 26th March from 12 pm until 5 pm.

Where

47 Wilmot Rd, Forth, immediately behind the Forth Primary School.

History

Forth was originally called Hamilton on Forth.

Forth got its name after the Forth River, being the 4th river after the Tamar.

Local Tips

The event is first-come, first served, so arrive at the music event area early to get the best spot.

Don’t forget to bring a picnic blanket, a comfy chair, and a friend, as you get ready to enjoy a great afternoon.

Tickets

Limited tickets.

The first fifty people will go into the draw for a wonderful one-hour massage at the Purple House.

Adults $15,

Children under 16 are free.

Strictly NO BYO of food and drinks.

Do you want to read the rest of the story?

How did we get to grow mazes and labyrinths?

Here it is:

The winding history of our mazes.

When Peter and I clapped eyes on The Manse, as it was called, it was love at first sight.

I think it was mutual, because our home happily stretched and shrank, accommodating the comings and goings of our six children and now enveloping the Purple House Wellness Centre.

It has rewarded us with 2 decades of glorious living.

Back in 1999 the garden and land had an aura of neglect with horse paddocks on one side and a sheep enclosure on the other side of the homestead.

A couple of snakes had set up home in a ramshackle shed and the 8 acres of river flats had been used and abused for potato crops.

We immediately got to work landscaping, starting out from our French doors of the kitchen, ending up with different garden rooms, all boxed with clipped hedges.

We had a Japanese garden, a medieval herb garden, a vegie garden, a rose garden and the list went on.

Not satisfied with that, Peter and the kids planted a deciduous forest because I had always been homesick for Northern European forests.

After planting 1000 trees in one weekend, two spaces opened right in the middle of the plantation, perfect for a couple of mazes.

I believe the mysterious urge for mazes resides deep within each human being, so we never questioned it.

Lacking funds, we collected boot loads of cuttings from a neglected graveyard at a secret location in the NW and got to work.

Peter copied several ancient designs, and with a piece of paper, a load of cuttings and kids, he measured out his design on the grass with pieces of string.

The maze with the diamond shape, was planted first.

Now that the kids knew what to do, we expected them to plant out the round maze, which they did.

I can’t remember if we ever paid them any pocket money, but they had fun, whacking each other over the head with branches and cuttings and learning valuable maze building skills.

They simply accepted it as part of their lifestyle, along with growing and harvesting 50 types of garlic, eating homemade bread, yoghurt and sauerkraut, family gatherings under the trees, lying around in hammocks and bonfires.

This all ended when I got hit by a truck in 2006.

We needed to simplify our lives.

Garden rooms were minimized.

Hedges made way for lawn.

The forest and mazes were abandoned, but they didn’t seem to mind.

They probably longed for much needed peace and quiet!

The area became inhabited by thousands of rabbits and dozens of feral cats, mother nature creating a precarious balance between cat and rabbit.

The first hundred-year floods decimated the mazes.

Bit by bit we resurrected the area and by June 2016, our mazes and river flats were picture perfect.

That’s when the second, even more devastating flood struck Forth.

We were flooded in and when our gardener returned to see the size of the destruction, he instantly resigned.

We didn’t blame him.

All his hard work had evaporated overnight, along with the rabbits and feral cats.

We put the whole area on the back burner once again.

In 2017, we had the good fortune to find a fantastic gardener and landscaper.

Since then the forest hasn’t looked back.

Trees, mazes and plants love the touch and attention of caring humans as much as we do, as you can see.

Today, our trees are some of the first to leaf up, the grass never stops growing in the winter and the mazes are rewarding us with a wonderful opportunity to lose and find ourselves again.

Isn’t this what life’s all about?

Old transforms into new.

What is lost is waiting to be found.

The answers to our problems are found inside our own mysterious depths.

We hope that you enjoy your A-Mazing experience as much as we do!

See you there.

Remember to secure your ticket today!

We look forward to seeing you there !