NICHOLAS Cole left England in 1839 looking for a better life. He did such a good job of finding one that his decedents still live in the very house he built 170 years ago.But it's not just the house that has been kept in the family.Nicholas Cole the sixth still runs the Bookaar sheep farming property started by his pioneering ancestor and shears in the same shed his family has used since 1951."It's a good old house," Mr Cole said."It's a reasonable-sized house, still big by modern standards but not too large."If the walls could talk they'd tell stories about generations of men and women working the land and how it survived the Black Thursday fires which swept through the district in 1851. After this weekend the old bluestone home will know a thing or two about hosting a party to remember when the family celebrates 170 years on the property. "It's going to be a bit of a family reunion. A lot of people are coming," Mr Cole said.Like all good party hosts, Mr Cole has invited the folks from next door, the McArthur s, who take being good neighbours to a new level ? having also lived on the same property for 170 years.Nicholas Cole and Peter McArthur met on a ship travelling from Sydney to Melbourne in 1839.Along with a Frenchman named Duvernay, the pair walked to Geelong where they inquired at the pub, one of only four buildings in the town, about buying some sheep.There they made arrangements to inspect sheep owned by Peter Manifold at Purrumbete and subsequently purchased a number of sheep each.Mr Cole and Mr McArthur became partners and took up land that was afterwards known as West Cloven Hills and Menningort runs. The original bluestone home built by Nicholas Cole has undergone a few renovations, including the addition of three rooms and a kitchen in 1863 and the more recent addition of electricity and plumbing in 1994 so the current residents could move in.Until then, Mr Cole and his family had lived on another cottage on the property."It needed a lot of work. It didn't have any power or plumbing but it was a good solid structure," he said.Like many houses, this one has it's fair share of quirks including a shearing shed with walls a mere five feet high after stonemasons walked off the job to try and strike it rich on the Ballarat goldfields and even a ghost or two about the place."My daughter Emma reckons there are ghosts here," Mr Cole said."When she was a girl she said she used to see and talk to an old lady."Happy to continue his family's traditions, Mr Cole said although he had worked as a wool classer and dabbled in music, the call of the family property proved too strong."I did other things when I was younger but this is always what I wanted to do," he said."The shearing shed is probably my favourite (part of the property) I spend most of my time out there."His love of music has been taken up by his 17-year-old son, Nicholas the seventh, who may one day find himself celebrating the second century of ownership of the property as part of one of Victoria's most enduring pioneering families.and aThe propert y has be ies have been run by the same families ever since.