All about EASE
Relaxing homes, gorgeous gardens & room updates
Travel can be life-changing. Just ask Natalie Walton and her husband Daniel Rollston, who took their children – Charlie, now eight, Sabina, five, and Isis, three – on a trip to Europe in 2015 that included a blissful stay on an organic farm in Verona, Italy. “It was wonderful,” says Natalie. “The children loved running freely on the property in Verona and we loved the sense of space.”
The time was ripe for a change. Daniel had sold his manufacturing business a short time before the holiday and Natalie, the owner of online homewares store Imprint House and an interiors writer, can pretty much work anywhere. “The weekend after returning to Sydney, we drove up to the Yarramalong Valley, in search of a new home and a new life,” she says.
They knew the area, a 90-minute drive north of Sydney on the NSW Central Coast, because a friend’s parents have owned a weekender there for many years. Natalie’s mum is nearby too.
The original idea was to buy land and build from scratch but that plan fell through. They pressed on and were delighted to find this rambling 10.5ha property, which came complete with an artist’s studio, a shed, several henhouses, two ponds and a dam.
The main house is a three-bedroom cabin blessed with banks of large north-facing windows. “Most of the property is bush and it’s a steep block, which affords us the most beautiful treetop views,” says Natalie. Probably built in 1984 (that date is written in concrete inside the fireplace flue), the house is clad in cedar boards inside and out. On the ground floor is the boot room, an essential in the country, and an open-plan living area, which Natalie says was a big part of its appeal.
While the building itself was in pretty good condition, Natalie and Daniel were keen to overhaul the interior, beginning with minimising the stained-timber panelling. “Before we moved in, Daniel and his dad came up to the house to paint as much of it white as possible,” says Natalie. “They focused on the bedrooms, as we didn’t want to be living with the smell of paint, especially since I was five months’ pregnant at the time.” (Baby Miles is now almost six months old.)
After nearly 12 months on the farm, the family has come to realise that life is flavoured by the seasons. Summer sees expeditions to the beach; the cooler months, baking missions and foraging trips to collect kindling for the slowburning fire; in spring, clearing the brush ahead of bushfire season takes priority. There are year-round activities that the freedom of life in the country allows too: visiting the chickens, tending the vegie patch and mucking about in the treehouse are everyday pleasures for the family.
Daniel and Natalie beaver away on the computer while the children are at school, but weekends are devoted to family time .“Sometimes we’ll walk up to the top grove where we have some orange trees,” says Natalie. “Other times, it will be a project such as clearing weeds or tackling the vines that are strangling trees. There’s always so much to do here and our days are punctuated by mealtimes, which are always sit-down affairs at the family table.”
It was a journey that brought the family to their new home, and the journey continues. “Despite the challenges, we’ve had an amazing first year,” says Natalie.