Hosting With Heart

Katrina Chambers is a writer, serial renovator, stylist, DIY aficionado and more recently, holiday property host. A prolific blogger since 2006, Katrina appeared alongside her sister Amie on Channel 9's The Block in 2011, an experience she fondly remembers and gleaned a wealth of knowledge from. Currently, Katrina's passion lies in all things blogging and she is now a significant presence in the d...

There are people who give lip service to being sustainable and there's Louise Freckelton. Along with her partner David Bray, Louise owns and manages Kestrel Nest, an off-grid, offline eco-retreat for couples, families and groups, situated on their broader property Highfield Farm and Woodland, based in Mt Adrah, New South Wales, about 60km east of Wagga. Louise is a former foodie turned farmer and...

Carly Baker-Burnham is not your average fourth-generation Queensland woman. Along with running Bloodwood Cabin, a rustic holiday shack she and husband Grant originally built as an 'adult cubby' made from reclaimed materials sourced from their 20,000 acre cattle farm, Bonnie Doone, Carly is a photographer, artist, celebrant, regenerative farmer, skilled management professional and Mum to four. In r...

Annabelle Hickson started her writing career as a news reporter for The Australian newspaper in Sydney and Brisbane before a handsome farmer in a small aircraft lured her out west to a grazing farm which they transformed into Australia's second largest pecan orchard. During this time, Annabelle wrote a regular monthly column at Country Style magazine, she co-created a podcast called Dispatch to a...

Chances are, if you're part of the Australian and New Zealand hosting community on Instagram, you've come across the account of host and shopkeeper Belinda Satterthwaite. Owner of the renowned Tomolly homewares store in Carcoar, NSW, Belinda is also a short-term accommodation host, having established the stunningly beautiful Hargan's Cottage, located adjacent to her own home in an old, converted f...

In 2017, Kathy Allen and her husband Adam Ryan were invited to take part in a new show on Australia's Seven Network called 'Instant Hotel', whereby 10 couples from around the country transformed their homes into short-term accommodation. The couples then stayed together in each of the properties and scored each other according to various criteria, ultimately resulting in an overarching winner bein...

Based in the small hamlet of Coolah in NSW, Kas Wren is a personal injury lawyer, photographer, writer and interior design enthusiast. She is also a former accommodation host and passionate renovator, having opened the doors to two highly successful Blue Mountains-based short stays in the past 10 years. More recently, her penchant for sharing refreshingly authentic photos capturing the very essenc...

Until her early forties, Leanne Watson was a typical, able-bodied, somewhat privileged wife and Mum to three kids. However, in 2007, that all changed, when, after numerous attempts at having unusual symptoms explained, Leanne found a GP who took her seriously and discovered that she may have a form of muscular dystrophy. Two days later, after a muscle biopsy, her neurologist confirmed she did inde...

Bec Macdougall is one industrious woman. With a background in branding and marketing, she and her husband Angus moved from Melbourne to Molyullah in north-eastern regional Victoria back in 2018, after deciding the property they had originally purchased as a weekender, Dunmore Farm, would become their new permanent home. Since the move, Bec and Angus married on the property and welcomed a daughter,...

Sam Walter is the founder of Heads on Pillows, a Melbourne-based, specialist digital marketing agency aimed at helping the accommodation and tourism sector increase direct bookings. Hailing from a Victorian family who run their own accommodation business, Sam has experienced first-hand the impact that a purposeful digital marketing strategy can have on - as his business name attests - getting more...

Elise Croker is a self-professed dreamer and creative visionary. Outside of her demanding daily life as a mum of four and an emergency department nurse, she has an avid fascination with history and architecture; one which she has come to indulge via the restoration and transformation of older properties. In recent years, she's opened two highly successful short-term holiday properties in New South...

Now based in the tiny south-eastern Queensland town of Mount Glorious, Hannah Puechmarin's career had very humble beginnings. In the early stages of learning photography, she was drawn to telling the stories of homes and capturing people doing their 'thing'. Currently, she works for an array of leading interior designers, travels broadly to capture the essence of Australia's most unique and charac...

Melissa Hobbs is a force of energy to be reckoned with. Based in northern NSW and having gone through a series of personal challenges in the years prior, she purchased a cabin in the small western Tasmanian town of Zeehan in early 2021, sight unseen. In the year that followed, throughout the ups and downs of Covid and - more recently - the tumultuous floods, she travelled back and forth from her N...

Celeste Mitchell is a freelance travel writer based on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. Along with being a devoted Mum and partner, she is also one of three founders of the rapidly emerging platform Life Unhurried, a multifaceted travel blog and lovingly curated directory of slow and sustainable stays from around Australia. As a giant nod to the incredible global appetite - further amplified by the ad...

Physiotherapist Shelley Kennedy and her engineer husband Tyrone have always liked to plan well. In their early days together they got a foot into the Perth property market and worked like mad to get their mortgage paid down as quickly as they could. This, in turn, paid off in spades, eventually enabling them and their two young daughters to secure and relocate to a rural farm in the picturesque co...

Based in South Australia, sisters Emma Read and Sarah Hall are both stylists who have established their own creative business, Read & Hall, with the core aim of creating beautiful interiors, with an emphasis on accommodation spaces, for themselves and others. In 2019, they opened their first holiday property, My Sister & The Sea, to great acclaim and a whirlwind of praiseworthy press, and more rec...

Jessica Bellef is a Sydney-based writer and stylist. After a long stint as the founding Head of Styling for Australia's largest online retailer of furniture and homewares, Temple & Webster, Jess has gone on to forge a successful career as a writer, most notably releasing her first stunning coffee-table book, 'Individual', published by Murdoch Books, in 2019. In the last few years, she has also wri...

In 2011, in part in an attempt to escape the stifling Sydney house prices, Georgie Stuart and her partner Matt purchased Bimlow Cottage, a historic 1890's rural property in a small town called Edith, on the doorstep of the Blue Mountains. Five years later, Georgie and Matt purchased another historic property for a mere $10K, relocated it to the same block of land as Bimlow, and started a 3-year re...

Born and bred Tasmanian Mary Jackson, along with her partner Dave, opened the doors to their breathtaking Dodge's Ferry holiday shack, aptly named Clifftop on Park, back in 2016 and since doing so, haven't looked back. In the five or so years they've been operating, they've managed to amass 510 Airbnb reviews, only 4 of which have been less than 5 stars. No mean feat as I am sure even the most sea...

Jen has now closed down her last property, The Fox House, Kyneton, due in most to the financial pressure of Melbourne's recent fourth Covid-19 related lockdown. In this short episode, she shares some of her plans for the Hosting With Heart community forward, including the creation of a new directory website for members. She's also looking forward to hosting the first in-person Hosting With Heart c...

Lucy Scott is nothing short of a modern dynamo. Despite a background in remedial massage therapy, she wanted to try her hand at renovating - potentially even as a full time career - and after buying her first family home about 6 years ago, dipped her toe in the water. What followed was a period of years gradually renovating the house, including the establishment of a self-contained studio, which L...

Beth Cooper, along with her partner Rod, owns Silvermere Coastal Retreat in Culburra Beach, New South Wales. Following a number of years successfully buying, renovating and selling properties in New South Wales and Victoria, as well as going through a divorce, Beth, with her Dad in tow, finally came across the property that would soon be known as Silvermere in the midst of a search for a suitable...

Jade Just is a highly experienced travel communications and marketing specialist, having spent over 12 years working for an impressive array of employers including Western Australia's Scoop Magazine and as a travel writer for Melbourne model, influencer and brand ambassador Bec Judd. Since 2019, she's performed the role of Communications Officer for St John of God Health Care, a role that, given t...

Tara Larnach is the owner and manager of Simpson Cottage in Bundeena, a stunning coastal village approx 1 hour south of Sydney. Having stayed in the cottage with her family as guests in the late 2000's, a year or so later Tara became aware that the property they had all fallen in love with was for sale, and was fortunate enough to be able to purchase it, completely furnished, cleaner on board and...

Since Melbourne's hard lockdown ended in November, 2020, host Jen Clark's short-term accommodation management business Ranges Escapes has gone on a journey from being insanely busy and growing at a rate of knots, to in recent weeks winding down after she made the very tough - but necessary - decision to scale-back to managing only one property ongoing, The Fox House, Kyneton. In this episode, Jen...