How The Classic Safari Company founder Julie McIntosh unlocked a knack for interior design
Take a look inside the Sydney office brimming with bronze Zulu warriors, zebra skin and Zambian art.
By rights, The Classic Safari Company could have hired a professional interior designer to choreograph the interiors of their offices in Sydney’s eastern suburbs which are decorated with artefacts rich in inspiration from the wilds of Africa.
But sometimes you don’t have to be a trained interior designer to excel in office decor.
Businesswoman and The Classic Safari Company founder, Julie McIntosh, has decorated the firm’s Woollahra offices with African artefacts, artworks, sculptures and even vintage art deco chairs shipped in from Cape Town to get guests in the mood for a luxury safari in South Africa’s Kruger or a rustic bushcamp on the banks of the wild Zambezi River.
The September issue of Mansion magazine will be out in The Australian on Friday, September 26
McIntosh’s multi-storey terrace is littered with Art Deco furniture sourced from Cape Town, native oil artworks out of Zambia and bronze sculptures from across the mysterious continent. There are posters from Egypt and Morocco as well as barber boards from West Africa.
There’s an illuminated black virgin artwork from Cape Town plus classic Mandela dolls from Johannesburg.
Vintage chairs and pouffe ottomans eked out of real Zebra skin – with McIntosh assuring Mansion she has the permits to import – add to the ambience.
“Everything has a story behind it,” says McIntosh who has been in the travel business for 33 years.
“These items are hand collected from all my travels,” she adds, pointing at a family of bronze Zulu warriors from South Africa.
She’s had no interior design training, putting her obvious decorating skills down to “years of travel” and lots of drawing. “I’ve always had an artistic eye, fun for me is rearranging everything in the office.
“Every supplier from all around the world who visits us says our offices are the nicest,” she adds, showing off a battered wooden bureau stuffed with old school maps.
She has collections of near prehistoric binocular cases and bead work sourced from a disposal store in Pretoria which contained artefacts from the Boer War.
British photographer Nick Brandt’s famous gorilla photos line the walls.
South African-born McIntosh, who says most of her inquiries are for combination itineraries taking in safaris to African countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana, as well as trips to Victoria Falls and Cape Town, founded The Classic Safari Company in 1992.
The company specialises in providing hand-picked hotels which are owner-operated wherever possible. “With a bit of class and style and well interior decorated, and sympathetic to the area,” she adds.
“Some camps make you feel immediately immersed in the environment you are in. But ostentatiousness is not what we want, we are going back to the more real, raw authentic ‘Out of Africa’ experience.”
And for those more interested in travel than office decoration, McIntosh is fielding a lot of questions from prospective guests about visiting the Serengeti, Tanzania, during the wildebeest river crossings.
“It’s certainly one of the most commonly asked questions,” she says. “However, there has been so much negative publicity about the wildebeest river crossings, we are steering people away from that – only because it reeks of over-tourism and we don’t really like dropping our clients into the masses … so would recommend travelling out of that crazy time.”
For exceptional interior design, the Wilderness Bisate Lodge overlooking rainforest and volcanoes in Rwanda is one of her favourites. Guests normally do a two-night stay paying $US3800 ($5865) per night per person, staying in accommodation which to McIntosh looks like gorilla nests. A visit to see the gorillas is additional.
But she adds there are cheaper accommodation options which are equally lovely, such as Singita in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park which is about $US1500 per night per person.
This story is from the September issue of Mansion magazine, out on Friday, September 26.
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