Ravensthorpe Home Builders

Ravensthorpe is a highway town halfway between Albany and Esperance, and a home here has to handle semi-arid heat, long dry summers and freight that travels a long way. We understand what that takes. The Rural Building Co. has been building 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 homes for people who value craftsmanship and a real connection to the land.

Ravensthorpe is the seat of the Shire of Ravensthorpe, in the southern Goldfields-Esperance region, roughly halfway between Albany and Esperance. The town takes its name from the Ravensthorpe Range, surveyed by John Septimus Roe in 1848. Europeans settled the district in 1868, gold was found in 1898, and the rush that followed had the town gazetted by 1900.

Farming, mining and tourism are the shire’s main industries, and roughly two thirds of it is natural bushland made up of reserves, vacant crown land and national park. Ravensthorpe is a Cooperative Bulk Handling grain receival site. On Morgans Street, Ravensthorpe District High School has served the town since 1901 and today teaches Kindergarten to Year 12. The Ravensthorpe Wildflower Show has run since 1982 and exhibits around 700 different wildflower species over roughly a fortnight each September.

Our Albany office is about 292 kilometres west, and Esperance, closer at 187 kilometres, does not have a Rural Building Co. office. If that distance worries you, we understand, and we plan the site visits, the trades and the deliveries around it before the build starts. The climate is semi-arid, averaging 425.3 millimetres of rain a year, so we design for heat and long dry summers.

The gazetted town is the district’s service base, with 580 residents in the locality at the 2021 Census. It is a Cooperative Bulk Handling grain receival site, and a bulk wheat bin was built here in 1947 to hold over 30,000 bushels.

Townsite lots are the most straightforward sites in the shire, because the services are already at the boundary. The Kanowna suits a town block where the plan has to work without acreage around it.

The range, surveyed by John Septimus Roe in 1848, gave the town its name. Gold, copper and manganese are all found in the country around it, and the 1898 gold discovery is why there is a town here at all.

Land on the range side is bush rather than paddock, so clearing, access and fire planning come up early. The Bush View is drawn for treed blocks where you want to keep as many trees as you can.

Hopetoun is the largest town in the shire, with 1,115 residents at the 2021 Census, and it sits 50 kilometres from Ravensthorpe on the coast. It is the coastal option if you want the same district with the ocean at the end of the street.

Townsite lots there are smaller than the farming holdings inland, so the plan has to make every square metre count. The Sorrento is compact and still separates the living areas from the bedrooms properly.

Jerdacuttup and West River are farming localities in the country around Ravensthorpe. With roughly two thirds of the shire made up of reserves, vacant crown land and national park, holdings out here run to a mix of cleared paddock and standing bush.

A build out here usually means your own water and power, a long driveway and a long freight run. The Country House is a natural fit for a working holding, with wide verandahs and living zones kept properly separate.

Munglinup sits along South Coast Highway on the Esperance side of Ravensthorpe. It is farming country, and the highway is what connects it to everything else.

Distance shapes everything about building out here, because materials travel a long way and the schedule matters more than it would closer to town. The Garden View suits an open site where the outlook is the paddock and the sky.

Fitzgerald and Jacup are farming localities in the country between Ravensthorpe and Bremer Bay, on the inland side of Fitzgerald River National Park.

Holdings here are large and the roads are long, so access is the first thing we check, because it affects both delivery and the siteworks, the work to prepare the block before the build starts. The Hinterland Retreat is the biggest of our farmhouse designs and needs a site with room to place it.