When Pip Brett was growing up in Orange in NSW's Central West, she used to hurry past the old Masonic Lodge in Sale Street. It was a bit creepy, she felt, with no front door and a yard full of weeds.

Today the place is humming with activity. Light floods in through huge square windows at the front onto whitewashed brick walls and floor. A flock of budgies and lovebirds (crafted by Brett from feathers) perch on a cherry tree branch. Brightly painted abstracts and landscapes, some by her mother Kezz Brett, can be seen through the hanging baskets of ferns and faux flowers that form a jungle backdrop to groups of customers chatting animatedly over coffee and just-baked biscuits in the cafe.