Eco startup gets Mathew McConaughey touch
Hollywood heavyweight Matthew McConaughey is using his star power to shine some light on a Sydney startup’s dream of creating off-grid, low-footprint, eco-friendly getaway cabins.
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It is customary, and expected, that every Hollywood celebrity who visits Australia will tell us how much they love the land Down Under.
Stars with a new movie to push tell us they love us, and we lap it up, even if all they’ve seen is the tastefully bland interior of a five-star hotel room and a red carpet full of screaming fans (with maybe a spin on Sydney Harbour if they’re lucky).
But that’s not the case with Matthew McConaughey.
The Oscar-winner’s connection to Australia dates back to 1988, when he was an exchange student on the NSW Central Coast, and he filmed the movie Fool’s Gold here in 2007.
He’s experienced Australia at its most beautiful, having filmed in locales such as Port Douglas and Lizard Island, but he’s also seen us at our most ordinary and suburban.
His 1988 host family took him to World Expo ’88 in Brisbane, for example.
It’s fair to say he knows us well.
The Texan-born star has spoken of how Australia inspired his love of travel and getting into the great outdoors, which makes him the perfect celebrity partner for a Sydney startup that’s putting busy city types back in touch with the natural settings that help restore sanity and perspective.
Conceived by 32-year old twins Chris and Cam Grant, Unyoked provides tiny cabins in remote (but not too remote) wilderness environments for short stays.
Solar-powered, off-grid and eco-friendly, the cabins are trailered in to secret locations where guests will not be bothered by the sight of roads, buildings, power lines and – best of all – other people.
The company has 11 cabins so far, all within two to two-and-a-half hour drives from Sydney and Melbourne, meaning they’re easily reachable for even a weeknight stay.
“Wilderness on demand,” is how they describe it.
“Cam and I are not hoteliers; what we wanted to offer people was a gateway to the outdoors,” says Chris.
“We wanted to provide a basic base. It’s not a hotel, it’s closer to a cabin you stumble across in the woods or a campsite.”
The philosophy from the outset, Cam says, is to be “in the landscape not on it”.
“It’s meant to be as minimal and light a footprint as possible, and as close to carbon neutral as we possibly can,” he says.
“It’s built on wheels so we can get into these really cool areas and move them out without damaging the environment. They’re built small on purpose so it forces you to focus on what’s essential.”
And for those wondering: yes, toilets are included, as are rainwater showers.
With plans for cabins in Tasmania, Byron Bay and outside Canberra, among other destinations, the lads are well-placed to know some of Australia’s most beautiful wilderness areas, having enjoyed a peripatetic childhood that took them from Darwin (where they were born), to Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and rural Victoria.
The spontaneity of trekking trips away during their days as students inspired their eco-cabin venture at a time when they were both stuck on the corporate hamster wheel.
“I worked at the Commonwealth Bank in the strategy department and Chris worked for a high-growth start-up, and we saw the opportunities for those sorts of trips to disappear,” says Cam.
“We weren’t burnt out but we were on the path to getting there,” says Chris.
“So we built our first cabin to answer our own problem … and then we realised our community and our friends had the same issues.”
While there are other companies working in the same space, Unyoked’s success brought them to the attention of McConaughey, who was searching for case studies of innovators to profile in connection with his work as brand ambassador for Wild Turkey.
The True Detective star has been creative director for the label since 2016 and debuted his own bourbon last year.
McConaughey flew the Grants to the US to profile them on the label’s Talk Turkey web series, which led on to the idea of the actor helping design a cabin.
He’ll be in Sydney to unveil it this week.
“The Unyoked boys have really captured what so many people living in today’s frantic world are looking for; an opportunity to unplug for their high-pressure daily lives and reconnect with the wild,” McConaughey told News Corp.
The project also has a charity aspect close to the actor’s big Texan heart: proceeds will go towards protecting and preserving Australia’s wilderness for future generations.
The brothers say they didn’t know what to expect before meeting McConaughey, but they quickly found common ground.
“It’s actually quite cool because we had never met an actor like that,” says Cam.
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“But it was just the most normal interaction ever. We really felt that he got our idea. He does switch off and he does get off the grid, and he lives by that two-speed lifestyle, not just always hyper; he believes you have to step back sometimes. It was cool to see that, it wasn’t what we were expecting initially. It was cool to see that he shared that wavelength.”
As for the cabin he’s designed, the twins are keeping shtum until the launch.
“There’s a fair bit of his personality in there,” says Chris with a laugh.
“It’s still minimal, we’ve still kept it basic enough that the focus is the outdoors not the indoors, but there are some cool and wacky ideas we have incorporated.”
McConaughey himself said he’d “had a blast” co-designing the cabin with the lads, and he’s “especially excited to head back to Australia”.
It’s not the talk of a Hollywood star telling us what we want to hear.
When Matthew McConaughey says he loves Australia, it’s the real deal.
Originally published as Eco startup gets Mathew McConaughey touch