It all begins with a dream…

The idea of starting an air-bnb was floated way back in 2020, when we moved back to Adelaide for work, after having moved to our home in Stansbury when our daughter was just one year old, at the beginning of the pandemic. But at the time it all seemed like too much to organise. We had a young daughter just starting Kindy, Matt was flying away for work and Caroline running a successful art event company (time poor was our middle name)

So we organised a lovely permanent tenant and we didn’t have to worry about the house. Everything was great,

BUT…

We missed the opportunity to share our home away from home with our daughter, who was fast forgetting her blissful early childhood on the Yorke Peninsula (below are some of my favourite memories from our time living in Stansbury).

A few months ago we had the opportunity to decide if we wanted to rent it out full time again or take the chance to turn our home into an oasis that we could share with others.

Of course, we went with the latter and we haven’t looked back.

We’d spent countless nights, hours upon hours sending screenshots of furniture and marketplace bargains to one another. And then the time came to bring up a load of treasures two days before Christmas (we had to empty our Adelaide house, we couldn’t move it was so full!)

Christmas Day was lovely, but all we could think about was heading over to our favourite place and showing our now 5-and-a-half-year-old daughter her old home. It was surreal watching her walk through the front door, when she left, she was three and a half.

We’ve been here since… Painting, whipping the garden into shape and lovingly curating each space.

Most of all…

We’ve been creating a place where we can once again share experiences and create memories with our children (and eating hot chips of course!)

This project has given our family a lovely focus and brought us closer together. We had gotten so entrenched in our day-to-day existence that we had forgotten what is ultimately important to us, family, togetherness and beauty and to stop and enjoy the little things. To just chill. We know it will do the same for you.

It’s enabled us to be creative, we’ve thought about what we’d like to see in a holiday house and tried to think outside of the square.

Uncle Matthew’s is deliberately not Hamptons, or boho, or beachy.

It’s an escape from the ordinary.

It’s us.

And we’re so glad to be back.

Caroline + Matt xxx