The Retreat is a private sanctuary set within the gardens of Stonewalls Musk — intimate, secluded, and designed with the particular care of a place built by someone who understands what a proper escape should feel like. Where The Barn is grand and communal, The Retreat is quiet and self-contained: a single room built for two, and nothing more than that.
The Retreat unfolds across two pavilions, each with its own reason for being. The Bedroom Villa — a generous 50 square metres — holds the lounge, the bedroom and the bathroom in one considered sweep, panelled in sage green and dressed in quality linen throughout. A short walk across the garden stands the Reading Room, entirely its own: a separate pavilion with its own fireplace, its own kitchenette, its own television, built for the hours when you'd rather not move from the fire at all.
This is a place with no itinerary. Coffee before noon is optional. The fire does the work of the afternoon. A weekend here rarely feels like enough.
Felt genuinely removed from it all — but the town was only 8 minutes away when you needed it.
Beautiful, peaceful, with great views — wonderfully appointed and so serene.
A short walk from the villa, the Reading Room is a pavilion built for one purpose — to be left in for hours. The wood-burning stove sits on its stone hearth, tubular-framed armchairs draped in grey sheepskin pulled up close, hand-cut log stumps standing in as a coffee table on the jute rug beneath. A ladder shelf climbs one wall, stacked with magazines and books for whichever mood you're in.
A kitchenette sits at the far end of the room — a stone benchtop, a proper coffee machine, everything you need for a slow morning without leaving the fire's orbit. The television is there if you want it, though most guests find the fire does a better job of holding attention.
There's a good brownie on the table and a magazine open at a page you've already read twice. Nobody is in a hurry and it shows. This is the part of the day the room is built for.
The Bedroom Villa holds the lounge, the bedroom and the bathroom in one considered 50 square metre sweep, panelled throughout in sage green. A soft grey sofa and a round marble-topped table look out through full-height glass to the garden and treeline beyond — somewhere to sit that isn't the bed, coffee in hand, before the day has properly started.
The bedroom itself keeps things quiet: a wall-mounted screen, a sculptural branch coat rack strung with a single warm bulb, and curtains that filter the morning light rather than block it out. A timber-battened robe, a small stone-topped kitchenette nook, and a private ensuite sit just off to the side — everything you need, nothing you have to share.
Breakfast happens when you feel like it, not when you're told to — a coffee and a design book on the bed is a perfectly acceptable start to the day. This is what you came for. At night, the fire from the Reading Room across the garden is a short walk away when you want it, and a world away when you don't. You'll sleep well tonight.
A vessel basin sits on a slim stone-topped vanity, black tapware set into a plywood mirror panel that echoes the timber running through the rest of the villa. Rolled towels, Aesop hand wash, and a small open shelf for the essentials — nothing overdone, nothing missing.
The sage green panelling continues in from the bedroom, broken up by a pair of framed pop-art prints that add a little colour to an otherwise quiet palette. Deep enough to feel considered, small enough to feel like it belongs to a place built for two.
Unlike the wider estate, this walled courtyard belongs to The Retreat alone. Andrew's planting here leans Mediterranean and abundant — rosemary and lavender grown thick and a little wild rather than clipped into rows, hydrangeas banked along the fence line, a loose wildflower bed of cornflowers, cosmos and poppies, and grapevines climbing the pergola posts. A wine barrel doubles as a table under string lights, two chairs pulled up for the bottle you didn't need an excuse to open.
A gas BBQ sits tucked under the pergola for when you want to cook rather than just drink, and a stone-ringed firepit — timber blocks for seating, shaded by an old pear tree — takes over once the sun is gone. The walls mean complete privacy throughout; nobody sees you here unless you want them to. Beyond the courtyard wall, the same 25 acres of botanic gardens shared with The Barn are a short walk away, should you want them.
Beyond your private courtyard, the same botanic gardens shared with The Barn are a short walk away — ten distinct garden rooms across 25 private acres, a reflecting pond, stone-walled beds and a forest walk to the edge of the Musk Valley. An orchard of pear and quince trees fruits through the walled kitchen garden, and old farm relics — a rusted plough repurposed as a piece of sculpture — sit half-hidden among the vines.
Wedge-tailed eagles ride the morning thermals. Kookaburras announce dusk from the tree line. Eastern grey kangaroos graze the lower paddocks as the light drops. You don't arrange any of it — it simply arrives.