My life in travel: Designers Emma Read and Sarah Hall reveal the inspiration behind their unique SA Airbnbs

Childhood road trips gave these creative sisters what they needed to abandon corporate life for creating one-of-a-kind travel experiences with pre-loved pieces.

Read and Hall grew up loving fossicking amongst op shops on holiday. Picture: Getty Images

Childhood road trips gave these creative sisters what they needed to abandon corporate life for one-of-a-kind travel experiences with pre-loved pieces.

When we were growing up, our entire family would make the road trip from Adelaide to the Gold Coast every couple of years so our mum could visit her sister. Our parents managed to squeeze four of us kids into our Holden Vacationer.

The planning and anticipation that went into these trips was epic. Dad would pack the car utilising every square inch of space – roof racks and boot – and then we’d set off at 3am in order to meet his kilometre-per-day target. We’d drive all the way through country Victoria: Daylesford, Maldon, Castlemaine…staying in cabins and caravan parks. Then we’d hit New South Wales: Broken Hill, Hay, Young, Dubbo, then Queensland’s Goondiwindi, Toowoomba and finally came to rest at our aunt’s.

The living space at Love and Mutiny is fun and playful. Picture: Airbnb

Us kids read books constantly through the drive, played magnetic travel games, squabbled with our siblings about car space. Mum had a system where she kept surprise games up front with her (Dad was always designated driver on these trips) and she would pass them back every few hours when tensions were high. Lunch was chicken sandwiches Mum made in the park with barbecue chook and white bread and then a Peter’s Dixie Cup for dessert - a quintessential ‘80s Aussie family road trip.

Dad was the consummate tourist and would study paper maps in the cabin at night along with tourist brochures, meaning the drive was full of stops at wildlife parks, old jail tours and the like.

This getaway is tucked inside an iconic 1950s beach shack. Picture: Airbnb

But Mum and Dad really had a thing for stopping off at antique and op shops and this became the highlight of these trips for us. If purchases were made, Dad would simply ‘jenga’ the luggage to accommodate them. On one trip, we drove all the way home with a three-legged bamboo table wedged between the front and back seats.

This is where our love of ‘the hunt’ came from. We learned to fossick, that there is always a way to get something home and if you like it, you should buy it because you won’t see it again. Also, that you don’t need a place for it in your house, you just need to love it. All philosophies that serve us well now that the two of us, many years later, have teamed up to do what we do.

My Sister and the Sea is a charming coastal cottage in Marion Bay, SA. Picture: Airbnb

We started out just fossicking for pieces for our own homes and then for a holiday home for ourselves. We didn’t have a big budget and we’d never done anything like that before, so it was really just an experiment but it turned out so well and then others began asking us if they could stay. Then our brother suggested we start an Instagram so he and others could see what we were doing. The process was completely organic but it kind of snowballed. From there, we started to think maybe this is something we could do…create places we’d love to stay, where others could stay.

At the time, I (Sarah) was working as a solicitor and Em as a social worker. Somewhere in there, we went on a European trip together for Em’s 40th birthday. It was that trip that showed us that we are excellent travel companions and we spent our time basically doing the same things we did on those road trips as kids but on a bigger scale with nicer clothes and better food!

It's the perfect place to swim, read, explore, and do jigsaw puzzles. Picture: Airbnb

We launched in. Fast forward to many creative discussions, us working through quite a few of our childhood issues (there’s a lot to trigger you when you work with a sibling!), so many laughs and so many hilarious situations we’ve found ourselves in trying to get some ridiculous pieces home and we now have two South Aussie holiday homes we’ve created together, the first called My Sister & the Sea in Marion Bay and the latest called Love & Mutiny on a remote coastal strip on Yorke Peninsula. We also trade vintage and salvaged furniture when we can bear to part with the pieces we find, of course.

As for the next chapter, we always get a feeling when we’re ready…it’s not a given, we either just wait to feel the excitement or we realise we’re thinking about regional real estate a lot more than you’d consider normal. We’ve discovered that one of the most exciting parts of beginning a new project is location. Travelling to and exploring the places we’ve chosen in every season, getting to know the locals, the small towns surrounding them and the regional life we get to be a part of are the unexpected and beautiful bonuses of our whole experience.

For more information, click here. You can also follow Read and Hall on social media @readandhalltraders, @mysisterandthesea, and @loveandmutiny.

See also:

10 reasons to visit South Australia

11 SA road trips every Aussie needs to take

Best hikes to do in South Australia

Flinders Ranges: Total escape into wilderness

Originally published as My life in travel: Designers Emma Read and Sarah Hall reveal the inspiration behind their unique SA Airbnbs