There are holiday houses you love for a weekend, and then there are the ones you find yourself thinking about long after the bags are unpacked. Simpson Cottage was the latter for Tara Larnach. Before she owned the historic cottage, tucked into the wild coastal landscape of Bundeena in Sydney’s south, Larnach stayed there with her husband, Steve, as a guest. It was love at first sight. “A good holiday property should hook you in and have you wanting to buy it, or at least one nearby,” she tells marie claire. “Most of the time, when you get home, you realise it was just a holiday romance and the house was much like any other holiday property.”
That didn’t happen with Simpson Cottage. “We fell deeply, madly in love with it,” she says. Part of the attraction was its extraordinary position. The cottage sits beside the Royal National Park, its unfenced boundary seemingly dissolving into bushland, and the water is never far away. For Larnach, who grew up on a farm near Tamworth, it offered something she had missed since leaving the country: space. “It felt like I had a paddock to wander in again,” she says. Meanwhile Steve, who grew up in Bondi, needed the ocean. “So a holiday house for me needs a paddock. For him, it needs the ocean. Somehow, Simpson Cottage gives us both.”
When the couple eventually bought the property in 2011, Larnach knew she wanted to preserve what made it special, while continuing to share it with others. Today, Simpson Cottage is available to rent, welcoming couples, families and groups looking for a secluded escape surrounded by bushland and water. Over the years it has been the backdrop to family holidays, engagements, reunions and celebrations, with many guests returning year after year.
At 160 years old, this was never going to be a house that benefited from being stripped back and made new. In fact, Larnach hesitates to describe herself as its owner at all. “When the deeds were stamped with our names, I never really felt like we owned it,” she says. “Instead, I felt like we inherited the history and stories and all that came before us.”
She prefers to think of herself as a caretaker. “The cottage was here long before us and, hopefully, it will be here long after we’re gone. Being a caretaker means honouring those stories while preserving the cottage so future generations can discover its history and add their own chapter.”
That philosophy has become the guiding principle of the interiors. Rather than chasing pristine finishes or period-perfect reproduction, Larnach has allowed age, texture and imperfection to remain visible. New elements are softened with vintage furniture, timber and objects that already carry a sense of history. “We’ll never truly be able to create old heritage-looking parts that look authentic,” she explains, “so I soften the new with reclaimed timber, vintage pieces and materials that already have some age and character.”
“Rustic luxury, to me, is full of patina and texture and old-world methods of making things”
— Tara Larnach
The result is an aesthetic Larnach describes as “rustic luxury”. “If I had to use one word to describe the feel, it would be soul,” she says. “I don’t like shiny interiors that look perfect in the pages of a magazine. They tend to feel like places where you should sit up straight so you don’t make anything messy.”
At Simpson Cottage, the luxury is more tactile. Beds are dressed in pure linen, there are Turkish cotton towels and the kitchen is filled with handmade ceramics. Teapots and loose-leaf tea replace tea bags, while outside there’s a fire pit and inside the original open fireplace still works. “Rustic luxury, to me, is full of patina and texture and old-world methods of making things,” she says.
There are very few objects here without a reason for being. The timber shelves in the lounge room and king bedroom began as recycled boards Larnach found on Marketplace and collected from a farm near Goulburn. She cut and sanded them herself before handing them to the builder. “He struggled with their wonky edges and I had to stop him from trying to make them perfectly straight,” she recalls. “Given the cottage is nearly 160 years old, not much is perfectly straight these days, so the old worn timber felt like the perfect fit.” The objects displayed on the shelves are just as personal: old tools from her father’s shed, glass fishing floats her grandmother found washed ashore in Cairns, fishing reels from Steve’s childhood, and oil cans salvaged from the first workshop he worked at in Bondi. Even a pair of Larnach’s childhood riding boots has been given a second life as a doorstop.
At some point, she realised she had unconsciously created rules for what could come into the house. Every object needed to be at least two of three things: old with a story to tell, beautiful or useful. “I love the idea of guests wondering what the story behind something might be,” she says. “I think a cottage becomes far more interesting when it’s filled with stories rather than simply filled with stuff.”
That relaxed approach extends outdoors, where deer wander freely through the garden, nibbling plants and ensuring any attempt at landscaping perfection remains futile. “The Royal National Park is wild and a little rugged, so a perfectly tidy interior and highly curated garden would feel jarring,” Larnach says. “It would also be a battle I’d never win.”
Instead, life observes the seasons. “In summer, we follow the shade and spend our days reading in cool corners between swims in Simpsons Bay,” she says. “The doors are flung open to catch the breeze and blur the line between indoors and out.” And in winter, they follow the sun. “We curl up with a good book, a game and good company, and long dinners in the gazebo overlooking the bay become a leisurely affair.”
It’s that rhythm Larnach hopes guests slip into, because for her, Simpson Cottage isn’t simply somewhere to stay; it’s somewhere designed to make you slow down. “There’s a sense these days that everybody wants something from you,” she says. “Our phones are constantly buzzing, emails never stop and there’s rarely a moment without noise, distraction or something demanding our attention.”
She admits she came “kicking and screaming into the digital age”, only installing wi-fi at the cottage in 2018. Today, she believes part of its appeal lies in encouraging guests to ignore it. “I think people are craving places like Simpson Cottage because we’ve forgotten how to just be,” she says. “To sit with a cup of tea, stare at a view, go for a walk or spend an afternoon doing absolutely nothing without feeling guilty about it.”
Often guests don’t realise that is what they need until they arrive. “The urgency starts to fall away,” she explains. “People put their phones down. They spend longer around the dinner table. They go for walks without a destination. I know I’ve done my job when guests arrive and, after a day or two, realise they haven’t thought about work, their emails or their to-do list for hours.”
And when it is finally time to leave? “If they don’t want to go and they’re already thinking about when they can come back, then I’ve done my job.”
To book, go to simpsoncottage.com
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
