Greetings people!  

Well, I can now officially call myself a Highlander! I’m like Christopher Lambert or Sean Connery. I’m sure locals will argue that I need to live here longer than 2 weeks to call myself a “Highlander”, but I don’t care. I live here...so therefore I am! 

I think moving must be like giving birth. Excruciatingly painful, but you forget about the pain a few years later and decide to do it all again. But while it’s fresh in my mind, I’m now promising to NEVER move again...after the next move (as we’re in a rental place so will definitely have to move again). It really is a horrible experience, even if you have a really good group of removalists. We hired a company to pack and move all our stuff, and they were very good and very lovely, but it was still a horrible experience. Confusion! Regret! Sadness! Frustration! Anger! So many emotions in a 24-hour period.  

The actual physical move took 14 hours, as we moved from Surry Hills to Mittagong, and had to drop a few things off at Nattai Lodge on the way. Buddha was one of those “things”! When I purchased my apartment in Surry Hills, I inherited a 300kg statue of Buddha. The previous owner just left him on the balcony! There are no shelters or homes for abandoned Buddhas. They are just left to the universe to get adopted, and I’m sure it’s bad juju to not adopt a Buddha. I’m unsure as to how Buddha arrived on my balcony, but it took 3 muscular men...and me, to move my 300kg Buddha from the balcony of my 7th floor apartment! We demolished 2 large trolleys, but we finally managed to settle Buddha in the garden at Nattai Lodge. And I also purchased a stone bench from Lydie du Bray antiques in Mittagong (or Braemar, about 250m on the left after Bunnings as you enter Mittagong off the Hume Highway), to allow guests to sit and ponder life and talk to the enlightened one. If you haven’t checked out Lydie du Bray’s shop and gardens, you need to schedule in a visit. It’s amazing!!  

As soon as we arrived in the Southern Highlands, winter came knocking on the door. The weather in winter is cold. It’s VERY cold and makes me just want to get some logs on the fire and curl up on the sofa. Which you can do when you book a stay at Nattai Lodge...but it’s not as easy when you live down here and have a life to live...and don’t have a fireplace. But I do tend to dress for the cold down here, which makes the cold a little more tolerable. I look like a bum...but I’m warm. A beanie, two warm jumpers, a scarf and boots just about does the trick. I would be taken into the homeless shelter if I dressed like this in Surry Hills, but it’s the norm down here. I do see a few glamourous people, but they look cold (physically and spiritually).  

The changing colours of the trees is amazing. In only a few short weeks, we’ve gone from green to red. And from red to bare. I love deciduous trees in public spaces and other people’s gardens...but they’re a pain the arse in mine. My leaf blower is my best friend and my favourite workout equipment. It really gives your forearms a pump and I could use it for hours each day during Autumn and early Winter. The leaves just don’t stop. It’s CRAZY. With our beautiful old oak tree (Betty), the Boston Ivy, wisterias, and the apple and ornamental cherry trees...it’s a fulltime job keeping the yard looking neat and tidy. And on a windy day, it’s like herding a swarm of wasps. Futile and a little painful. Speaking of wasps, I also just found the BIGGEST european wasp’s nest. The exterminator man said it looked like Heathrow Airport pre-COVID (you could actually stick your fist in the hole it was that large). But They’ve gone now...to a better place! So you can safely make a booking at Nattai Lodge and not worry about running into wasps during your stay. 

Now we’re living down here, we’ve managed to get a few projects under way that future guests (new and returning) will get to enjoy! 

With all the rain we’ve had since the bushfires, the French doors are all looking a little worse for wear. They’re swollen and rotten and hard to open. So we have 10 brand spanking new French doors sitting in the garage waiting to be primed and painted, and then installed.  

We've also had a new 20K litre water tank installed at the back of the property, that will now take all the stormwater from the garage, rear of the main house and the cottage. It’s a big upgrade from the original 3K litre tank and will reduce our water bills, conserve water and better serve us when the next drought comes.  

We’re also in the process of having a new deck built beside the cottage, and once completed, we will dig up the grass behind the main house and put in a wildflower garden that will contain beautiful native and non-native blooms to attract bees and native birds. It’ll be a beautiful view from the living room and kitchen of the main house as well as the kitchen and deck of the cottage. We will also put a new outdoor setting on the deck so guests can enjoy the wildflowers.   

Speaking of the cottage, it will soon go live as a separate booking entity through Holiday Rental Specialists and Airbnb for mid-week accommodation short stays (The Cottage at Nattai Lodge). If the main house is booked midweek then the cottage won’t be available. And if someone jumps in and books the cottage for a midweek stay, then the main house won’t be available. So we will never have two separate guest bookings on the property at the same time, so you’ll have the whole property to yourselves whichever building you book.

Many people are working from home these days, either for a few days a week or permanently. And people are looking for a change of scenery, but don’t want to pay the price for a 4 bedroom, 7 bed house. So the cottage now has fast wifi, and a desk with a stylish and comfy swivel chair. So you can throw a few logs on the fire, and work from “anywhere” while enjoying the crackling of the fire and the cosiness of the cottage. And we’ve also added a butcher’s block in the cottage kitchen, to add more workspace if you want to cook up a feast. And after work...or at lunchtime, you can do one of the main bushwalks that start right at the front gate of Nattai Lodge.  

There’s the walk to the top of Mt Alexandra, which has views all the way to Bathurst, the Blue Mountains and beyond, or the Sixty Foot Falls walk, which is a beautiful walk, especially after all the rain we’ve had. And if you’re a bit more adventurous, there’s the full round trip which takes you under the Hume Highway and all the way back to Lake Alexandra (just over 9km in total). Check them out in more detail here https://www.alltrails.com/parks/australia/new-south-wales/lake-alexandra-reserve?ref=header 

And in future blog posts, I’ll take you through the landscaping work we’re having done to the bottom garden. I’m so excited about this and it’s going to look amazing.