AN 1860s pioneer hut has been reborn as luxury accommodation, reports KIM WOODS

Matt Pfahlert never lets anything old or antique escape him.

The Beechworth resident is a passionate scrounger and clearing-sale addict.

Over the decades Matt, 40, has acquired a swag of pioneer bushcraft skills from rebuilding and repairing mountain cattlemen's huts.

He has also devised and led wilderness programs for youths considered at risk, at locations ranging from central Queensland to Typo Station in North East Victoria.

His latest project, with his wife Gina Bladon, is the rebirth of an 1860s pioneer hut - christened 1860 - as a stylish, luxury bed-and-breakfast accommodation at Beechworth.

The two-roomed timber slab hut was originally built by a German carpenter on Rotherwood, a farm near the Victorian town of Emerald.

The horizontal slabs had been cut from local mountain ash trees and carefully dovetailed at each corner.

In the mid 1980s the hut was given to a Taggerty farm that served as a refuge for wildlife and homeless youth, run by Bronwyn Raynor.

Matt had established links with Bronwyn while working at the remote Typo Station.

When Bronwyn decided to sell up in 2003, she offered the hut to Matt and Gina.

The couple jumped at the chance, and began the task of dismantling the hut and rebuilding it piece by piece on a vacant block next to their Beechworth home.

"When I was a child, my mother was into old antiques and would often take me to the antique shops at Beechworth," Matt says.

"So, the town has a special attachment to my childhood - visiting the bakery and looking at all the old stuff.

"Gina and I bought a home here in 1999 and moved from the King Valley in 2003."

Matt had finished working as the manager of Typo Station to take up a role as a family therapist and as "Mr Mum" to the couple's children, Eadie and Max.

Gina was working as a marketing manager for Brown Brothers winery.

They thought the old hut would be a great asset on their vacant block, bordering the pretty Spring Creek - somewhere for friends and family to stay.

"Then we said, 'why not make it really special and a potential income-producing asset?"' Matt says.

"It would give us the flexibility of combining a business with small children."

King Valley builder Mark White and pioneer skills mentor Graham Fall helped Matt keep the hut authentic.

"Over the past four years we have gone to painstaking lengths to beg, borrow, collect, demolish, swap, barter, mill, split, cart and salvage genuine and unique materials for 1860," Matt says.

"Obtaining the right materials has almost been as big a project as the building of the hut.

Old stables at Markwood, east of Wangaratta, yielded slabs for the ensuite and kitchen, second-hand corrugated iron for the roof, and bark.

Doors and baltic pine ceilings were salvaged from an old house in Tungamah.

Jarrah floorboards and reclaimed blue gum benches came from old army barracks in the region.

Other rescued pieces include doors, fence palings, railway sleepers, red gum posts, truss timbers and kitchen benches.

Matt says the traditional materials extended to the use of flattened bark in the gable ends and an original lime mortar recipe to caulk between timber slabs.

"I took three months off and worked solidly on the hut to get it to lock-up stage and then it took another three years to fit out," he says.

The upmarket 1860 was opened to the public last August and has been booked out since.

"Our occupancy rate has been 70-90 per cent, with 60 per cent of visitors from Melbourne, 20 per cent from Sydney and the balance from Canberra, Victoria and overseas," Gina says.

Although the hut is finished, Matt has a pile of wooden cobblestones rescued from old stables awaiting the next project.

"Matt is the sort of person who can never sit still for too long," Gina says.