Gerringong

Look, when I first come down the coast here, I think it was late 80s, 89, something into 89, 88 or something like that.

I drove over the hill at Gerringong and I looked down when I come around the bends and I saw that town and I said, I'm going to live there.

I said, that's just awesome, look at that.

There was no Alhambra or no...

And it helped that Mrs Mace was Gwen's preschool teacher too, so she was the kind of kindergarten teacher.

But look, this, yeah, beautiful man, beautiful, beautiful wife and lovely family.

You know, Gwen's family, the Stewart family from Gerringong, been there for generations.

You know, they, I remember telling stories of how the farmers used to barter with the Aboriginal community in Gerringong and old Nan used to do the weaning for the farmers for the potty calves and and how they used to barter seafood and things like that and bush food with the local farmers and how they used to help one another survive back in the days when times were tough, you know, and I think that sort of spirit of that community is still there.

And be careful putting on this particular song when you're on a long road trip.

Because I did it on our way to Gerringong a few weekends ago.

And I might have played it two or three times and then we just kept singing it over and over and over and over again.

So Amy's going to be performing at the Petersham Bowling Club, September 27, 7 till 9pm.

Simone Matthews is the founder of Soul Home, an interior designer, a property developer, a mother of four, and one half of a 20-year creative partnership with her builder husband, Ben.

Together, they have quietly built one of Australia's most interesting design and development practices, a body of work that includes the much-loved Soul of Gerringong, The Pause, The Batch, and a string of personal homes that have been lived in, photographed, and eventually let go of.

A leader who has made the rare, articulate choice to reduce her studio to a team of one and to choose energy over empire and to build a life her business fits inside of, rather than the other way around.

This is a conversation about designing a home and about designing a life, about a marriage that is also a business model, about what you have to let go of when you decide that growth was never the goal, and about the quiet, radical power of doing less more beautifully.

Um, I feel like it sums you up pretty well, but I'm so excited to have this conversation.

I remember meeting you, and I've watched your journey over the years.

I've watched everything that you've done, especially the incredible project that was Soul of Gerringong.

And I say this, and I said this to you on the phone in our pre-call, you put Gerringong on the map.

Well...

All my many years as we've driven down the coast I've seen beautiful ocean hillsides all with cemeteries on them and I thought I'd love a spot like that to lay down forever and we moved to Gerringong and in the very first week we saw a little handwritten notice pinned up on the community notice board.

Someone was leaving town and they had beds and saucepans and fridges for sale.

And at the end of the notice had two plots in Daringong Cemetery.

I went up to Newtown for a couple of years and worked up-- I actually worked at, um, Channel Ten on their reception desk righ-right when Big Brother was coming out, so it was very hectic.

Um, and then moved to injury management, and then when I got engaged, I moved back, back home, um, 'cause my husband is a Gerringong boy.

Uh, where did you find him?

Uh, he was my football coach, would you believe? [laughs]

So I sent those to her, and that was the first run of fabric.

And then the second one was actually Jade Fisher, who's a local artist.

She's Gerringong-based, and, um, she's done a lot of collaborations, bigger ones than me, you know, with Adairs and things like that for linen.

Um, so I used some of her repeats for the, um, the current range that's on sale.

Yeah.

Well, what have they got in the water down there in Gerringong, you reckon, makes them such good

footballers? What's he coming back from? ACL, I think.

ACL? No,