Mount Gambier’s top six power couples including Melissa and James Stephenson, Carly and Steven Scheidl
From married couples to mothers and sons, Mount Gambier’s power couples are making moves in the business world and we’ve compiled the top six.
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From building businesses from scratch to contributing to the community, Mount Gambier is full of inspiring power couples.
To celebrate their achievements, The Mount Gambier News has compiled a list of the cities’ top six partners in crime from husbands and wives to mothers and sons.
MELISSA AND JAMES STEPHENSON
The Old Mount Gambier Gaol
Almost 11 years ago Melissa and James Stephenson returned to Mount Gambier to take over the Old Mount Gambier Gaol.
The heritage building was in disarray and transforming it into a tourism site was met with criticism.
“When we walked into the door we had about 14 homeless men living here,” Mrs Stephenson said.
“We did face quite a bit of harsh critique and we did get quite a few front pages saying we were coming down from Queensland kicking our homeless out in the cold.”
Starting from scratch, the couple had never worked together before and Mrs Stephenson said it was a challenge to grow the business and their family.
“It’s been a juggle,” she said.
“We did everything wrong. We did everything we thought we should do, and we did everything that our industry says we should do and then about four or five years ago we just were struggling to meet all those demands with raising young babies.
“We thought something’s got to give, and it’s going to be our relationship and we just scratched everything and started doing things our way and that’s when things started to really flow.”
Now a family of five – the two youngest members having only ever lived in a prison – being in business has strengthened their relationship.
Mr Stephenson is the front man, passionate about putting the region on the stage with music festivals and Mrs Stephenson prefers to be behind the scenes, uncovering the building’s 153 year history to share with school camps and the ancestors of former inmates and wardens.
“It’s not for everyone but for us running our own business and calling our own shots and creating the lifestyle we want. I can’t imagine living any other way,” Mrs Stephenson said.
CARLY AND STEVEN SCHEIDL
Home and Living Company
Together, husband and wife duo Carly and Steven Scheidl have built solid foundations in the business.
He is a third generation builder and she has forged a 15 year career in drafting and interior design and after starting their own businesses decided to join to forces and form Home and Living Company in 2014.
Outside of designing, constructing and renovating, they celebrated 18 years together in January.
“We were high school sweethearts, who were friends first and I think this is an important factor in why we have been together so long,” she said.
“We actually like each other as people and we make a great team because we are always respectfully brutally honest with each other and both have impeccably high standards, which is good for our clients.”
LYN MCLACHLAN AND LACHIE ROWBOTTOM
The Limestone Coast Pantry
Inspired by the recipes handed down by their mothers and grandmothers, The Limestone Coast Pantry is a family affair.
With a shared ethos of low food miles and celebrating locally sourced produce, mother and son, Lyn McLachlan and Lachie Rowbottom started the business from a desire to make jam five years ago.
“What was going to be a tasting room with local produce turned into a quite a diverse business,” Ms McLachlan said.
It now incorporates a cafe, live music and function venue, catering, the Morrison Jazz Club plus the Bookmark Cafe and the soon-to-be-relaunched Couch Potato.
Hit hard by pandemic’s hospitality shutdowns and border closures they are beginning to rebuild and revisiting their purpose.
Mr Rowbottom has set his focus on expanding their wholesale range of preserves and his mum is stacking the retail shelves with boutique, local produce that cannot be found in supermarkets like abalone from an Allendale business.
“One of the things that we really want to do more of is showcase our local products and produce for retail,” she said.
AMANDA AND MATTHEW FOX
Fox’s Chook House Chicken and Game Meat
In their first two years of business, Amanda and Matthew Fox have supported each other through appendix surgery, a broken back and a pandemic.
The owners of Fox’s Chook House Chicken and Game Meat have been through a lot together in a decade of marriage.
Mrs Fox is a chef by trade and Mr Fox an accident prone motor cross rider come butcher.
“I haven’t made Amanda’s life easy,” Mr Fox said.
“Without Amanda, without my rock, I couldn’t have done it. Without me we couldn’t do the butchering but without her I wouldn’t be here.”
Wanting to spend more time together, they decided they wanted to start a business and it was no surprise Mr Fox had two broken arms when opportunity arose.
Now putting their own twist on a range of chicken and game they are working towards going green cutting down plastic and going compostable.
While there is a wall between them most of the day, the young family has found balance.
“We can structure our lives around it we take it in turns with afternoons off to pick up the kids after school,” Mr Fox said.
“On Thursdays I go swimming with my son or Amanda goes dancing with Sophie.”
ALEX AND KYLIE MARLOW
Gym Challenge Meals
Alex Marlow is the ideas guy and wife Kylie Marlow is the glue that keeps it all together.
What started a side hustle making meals for an F45 gym challenge and selling them from the
Mount Gambier Hospital Cafe has transformed into an extensive range of meals with barcodes to track the nutritional content sold all over town.
Ten meals on day one snowballing to 100 before Mr Marlow decided it was overrunning the cafe and it was time to scale it up or cap it.
Within 12 months he had leased a kitchen and handed over the management of the hospital cafe.
It was tough and Mr Marlow said it would not be possible without the backing of his schoolteacher wife.
“The meals didn’t stay on the rapid curve upwards, eventually it plateaued out and then I suddenly went from quite a comfortable life to working in a sh***y kitchen environment,” he said.
“We had a really comfortable existence at the hospital cafe, 10 years in business, we’d done the hard yards and we were seeing the fruits of that labour.
“Then Gym Challenge Meals happened and I’m like ‘hey honey do you mind if we go into a stupid amount of debt to do this and there’s no guarantees.
“She’s let me hand grenade our life a little bit.”
It has not always been easy for the couple, who lost twins a few years ago but they are determined to show Archie, 8, Henry 5 and Audrey, 1 how fortunate they are with generous acts like cooking up 40 family roast chicken dinners to donate to AC Care on Christmas Eve.
MORRIS AND MARY DICKINS
A formidable partnership in over 30 years of marriage Morris and Mary Dickins are not only well known for not only their charity work and business endeavours but for bringing people together.
They built Dickins’ Delights from a hobby to winning a gold medal at the Australian Good Awards before Mr Dickins retired from the toffee making game.
Together they renovated an 1800s shearers quarters into a home where they can be regularly found cooking up a feast to make new arrivals to Mount Gambier feel welcome.
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