Step inside Byron’s chic new hangout
Six stylish villas set the stage for a peaceful getaway among the rolling hills just 20 minutes from the beach.
It’s showtime on a shiny winter’s day at The Brooklet, a luxury getaway perched on a 50ha property in the Byron Bay hinterland, a 20-minute drive from the hip coastal hub. Celebrating the completion of her new Northern Rivers lodgings with a lunch for 70 under a shapely marquee, Greta Smith is doing what she loves best: sharing food and fine wines, facilitating introductions to new best friends, hugging a lot.
Behind the outdoor kitchen’s 5m concrete centrepiece bench, guest chef Christine Manfield and The Brooklet executive chef Simon Favorito are plating up green masala mussels, yellowfin tuna with coconut beetroot pachadi and Brooklet Springs goat with Davidson plum korma curry. It’s a menu bursting with local pride.
This newcomer to northern NSW’s top-drawer accommodation portfolio embraces six villas (three with two bedrooms, three with one bedroom); a three-bedroom, two-bathroom former dairy called The Bails; and the three-bedroom Farmhouse, which is home to Greta, husband Perry and their three children.
Also on the estate is a 25m mineral pool, hot tub, sauna, ice bath, tennis court, and nearing completion, a gym. There’s The Bar (once a tractor shed) and an ambient space called The Barn, which can be hired for retreats, events or corporate confabs. A deck with a priceless outlook links the two, while travertine tiles underscore the communal areas.
The villas are spacious and impeccably finished, embodying style and substance. The design brief given to Byron Bay house whisperer Ron Johnson was to create an aura of homeliness with a nod to coast and country. They were constructed by neighbour Brett Sharpe, a fourth-generation local, and made French-country chic by Amanda Luckmann of Caravan Interiors. Bedding is white and cloud-like with white boucle bedheads and bolsters. A big bathroom in the villa with wheelchair access has walls of handmade Moroccan tiles in a herringbone pattern that took the tiler a month to affix. In sea blues and earthy browns, it’s a space that all but shimmers.
There’s more: high ceilings; floors of solid oak; charred Japanese-style timber cladding; a private laundry; chimneys of recycled brick. Each villa has a gas fire inside and a wood fire outdoors, while the sun-drenched terrace boasts deck chairs facing a lily-filled dam and a table for al fresco meals.
Nature is the main event here, with blazing sunrises and sunsets, the sweetest birdsong, rolling hills from Central Casting, and a spectacular night sky. Perfection is a crisp winter’s evening outside with a crackling wood fire, a glass of wine, and your stargazing app of choice.
Kitchens are generous and equipped to handle snacking, feasting or grazing. Welcome provisions include grainy bread, brie, hummus, sweet Bangalow ham, blueberries, yoghurt, eggs, crackers, and fresh limes and lemons for G&Ts. (Look for the DIY cocktail corner.) Give The Brooklet a shopping list before you arrive and provisions will be ready and waiting, or pre-arrange meals with your hosts.
Greta and Perry bought the property, a macadamia and stone fruit farm, in 2007. It shares an eastern boundary with luxury wellness retreat, Gaia, sold by the late Olivia Newton-John and her co-owners to Andrew and Nicola Forrest in 2021.
Greta says she always knew they would find something unique in the hinterland. Holidays had been spent beachcombing at Belongil and Wategos, and browsing stores at Possum Creek and Newrybar. On her checklist were fig trees, rolling hills, farmlands, cows and a long driveway. She knew The Brooklet was “the one” the minute she saw it after two years of house hunting.
The two were married here in 2008. In 2016, they decided to live in the hamlet of Brooklet full time, moving from Sydney to escape the corporate grind, and, says Perry, a former media executive, “to heal”.
“I’m the pin-up boy for being broken, mentally and physically, in your 50s,” he says over a Davidson plum spritz at The Bar. “Three years on a tractor, three years on the hoe healed me. For nearly five years I just did manual labour, which was the most amazing medicine.”
Greta studied production horticulture at TAFE and with friends set up the Bhavana Cooking School. Both ardent foodies, she and Perry were keen to meet artisans, custodians and providores. “I love the thought of bringing food to people,” she says.
For her lunch, Manfield keeps the shopping list “hyper local”. There are curry leaves and herbs from The Brooklet; chicken and goat from Brooklet Springs farm next door; prawns and tuna from fishermen in Byron Bay; saltbush and warrigal greens from Burringbar; rice from Nimbin. Davidson plums, pureed, are the tangy base for her korma curry.
The Brooklet has many inspirations. First and foremost, the five-star Borgo Santo Pietro boutique hotel in the Tuscan city of Siena where the Smiths stayed in 2014. “It had a very similar vista to The Brooklet,” says Greta. “Small villas, beautiful gardens to forage in, pencil pines, a cooking school, beautiful Friday night gatherings, an outdoor kitchen.”
A stay at Rodney Dunn and Severine Demanet’s Agrarian Kitchen in Tasmania in 2015 cemented the cooking-school plan. In turn, Perry was impressed by New Zealand’s high-end lodges and the way they merged luxury and rural cachet. Both are fans of agritourism dynamo Rose Wright, whose Regionality initiative unlocks regional potential. Covid put the focus back on regional Australia, says Perry. This is where the international focus could be, he believes. “The hinterland experience is underrated. That’s the education driver for us. I see the Byron hinterland as Australia’s answer to Tuscany.”
Greta sees it as a place of unique energy. “It’s a magical, healing land that sits in your heart.”
TO-DO LIST
Explore
Village life defines this region. Try Bangalow, Alstonville, Eltham, Clunes, Federal, Pottsville or Newrybar, and you’ll be soaking in it.
Eat
Harvest restaurant in Newrybar showcases local produce, with a deli and community garden in its orbit. Add to the list: Pipit (Pottsville), Ciao, Mate (Bangalow), Barrio (Byron), Fins (Kingscliff), Tweed River House (Murwillumbah).
Splash
One of the Smiths’ favourite outings is to Killen Falls, a large swimming hole on Emigrant Creek with a 10m waterfall at one end.
Play
Golfers can enjoy nine holes at Teven Valley, a Craig Parry-designed course, and the only nine-hole course included in the Golf Australia Top 100 public access courses.
The Brooklet is a 20-minute drive from Ballina-Byron Airport. One-bedroom villas are from $750 a night, minimum two nights; two-bedders from $950; The Bails from $1250; The Barn hire, $1800. Private event, retreat and corporate packages available. Membership is in the offing.
Susan Skelly was a guest of The Brooklet.
