Mount Barker Home Builders

Building a home in Mount Barker, Western Australia, means designing for cool-climate country, open paddocks and long views east to the ranges, and we understand what that takes. The Rural Building Co. has been creating homes across regional Western Australia since 1992, from Kalbarri in the north to Albany in the south. As an award-winning WA builder, proudly built by WA Country Builders (BC11422), we design for people who value craftsmanship, authenticity, and a deeper connection to the land.

Mount Barker sits on the Albany Highway in Western Australia, 50 km north of Albany, and it is the administrative centre of the Shire of Plantagenet. Lowood Road is the main street. The town has a Kindergarten to Year 12 school, a library, a swimming pool, a recreation centre and the regional saleyards, so it works as the service centre for the whole district.

This is a family town. Mount Barker Community College takes students from Kindergarten to Year 12 on a single campus, about 700 of them, with a working farm and a Trade Training Centre on site. Mount Barker is also one of the five nominated subregions of the Great Southern wine region, with the first grapevines planted in 1967 and riesling the signature variety. Banksia Farm on Pearce Street holds the world’s only complete collection of Banksias.

Blocks here range from serviced lots in the townsite to rural and lifestyle acreage out through the grazing and vineyard country. If you have found the block and you are not sure what it will take to build on it, we understand, and a free site assessment is where we start.

Serviced lots inside the townsite put you inside walking distance of Lowood Road, the school, the library and the swimming pool. Scheme water comes from the Mount Barker treatment plant, which is fed from the Albany system.

A townsite block usually needs less siteworks, the work to prepare the block before building starts, than an acreage site further out. The Country House or The Argyle both sit well on a town lot with room for a verandah.

Kendenup sits 20 km north of Mount Barker on the eastern side of Albany Highway. It is a village of small acreage rather than a town, with a primary school and a general store.

Village lots and surrounding rural blocks from about 8 to 50 hectares both come up here. There is no reticulated sewerage in Kendenup, so waste water is handled on site with a septic system. The Karridale Retreat and The Kingston suit both ends of that range.

Narrikup is 18 km south of Mount Barker, west of Albany Highway, in jarrah forest country. The Shire treats it as a growth area, and it is well serviced for a village of its size, with reticulated water and sealed roads.

Blocks run from small serviced village lots to treed acreage and grazing land. The Forest View or The Bushland Retreat both suit sites where clearing is limited and you want the trees kept.

Porongurup is fifteen minutes east of Mount Barker, and it is the other nominated wine subregion in this shire. Cellar doors line Porongurup Road, among them Castle Rock Estate, Duke’s Vineyard and Ironwood Estate.

The blocks there are sloping and treed, so expect siteworks, retaining and a bushfire construction standard on your site. The Valley View or The Marri View are drawn for exactly that kind of block.

Rocky Gully is a rural village at the western end of the shire, on the southern side of Muir Highway and 68 km from Mount Barker. That makes it the furthest of the shire’s settlements from town.

Out here you are building on farmland, so power, water and access all need checking before design starts. The Evolution Farmhouse or The Linton suit an open site where the house has to stand on its own.

The Shire of Plantagenet is home to about 5,300 people, and Mount Barker is the largest town in it with 2,855 residents at the 2021 Census. Farming across the shire runs to wheat, sheep, beef cattle, canola, olives and wine.

We build across the whole shire, not only in the townsite. If your block is out past Kendenup or all the way to Rocky Gully and you are wondering whether we come that far, we do. The Hinterland Retreat is a good starting point on a large rural block.