Your hosts
We cook the breakfast ourselves, every morning, in our own kitchen. This is a house we live in rather than a building we run, and most of what we've got to offer comes from that — a proper meal in the morning, and two people who know the area well enough to be worth asking.
How we ended up here
Tim spent most of his working life as an engineer at Telstra, and for a good stretch of it ran a vineyard alongside the job, which he will tell you was rather difficult.
When we sold the vineyard we went looking for whatever came next. Running a bed and breakfast would be new to both of us, which was a good part of the appeal.
We looked at houses all over the south, and hadn't really decided we were going to do it at all. What settled it was the view. Once you've stood somewhere with a view like this one, nothing without a view will do.
What we did to it
We spent the best part of eighteen months on the house before we opened the doors. Every room has its own bathroom now — we put three of them in — and a heat pump of its own, so no room is ever the cold one. Then we started, with a Dutch couple who stayed three weeks. A lot of Dutch people have stayed since. We've never entirely worked out why.
The map
There's a map on the wall with a pin in it for everywhere a guest has come from. Leonie puts them in. Europe is now more pin than paper, and it's reached the stage where it needs to be a bigger map.
The guest book
Write in it in whatever language you think in. There are entries in French, German and Chinese already, and they aren't there for decoration — the next person to open the book might be exactly the one who can read them.
Our son reads the ones we can't. He's an engineer who studied languages, which is a combination we've never entirely got to the bottom of.
From the guest book
Tim's done the walks
Tim has climbed Federation Peak twice, the first time in the 1970s. He's done Rob Roy, had a go at Mount Aspiring, and walked the Kepler. If you're here for the walking, ask him — he'll tell you what a track is actually like rather than what the sign says.
He does not climb any more — "I'll never use it again," he says of the mountaineering gear. Leonie will tell you he still has his crampons. If you're here for the walking, ask him: he is worth asking.
Who does what
Leonie is up at six and cooks the breakfast. Tim runs the mower and the chainsaw over the six acres, though the wallabies do more of the mowing than either of them. When every room is full, Tim's the waiter at breakfast. Between us we've been doing this for ten years and have got reasonably good at it.
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