Maydena Accommodation
Fern Mt Field
Tasmania’s southwest is one of the last truly wild places on earth – most of its forest impenetrable by anything other than footfall (and even then, sometimes just). There is some last civilisation on the frontiers of this remote place, where the tiny old timber towns of Westerway, National Park and Maydena wave a sleepy farewell to explorers on long journeys into the wilderness.
Second from the end of a quiet country lane in a nearby rural locality called Tyenna, a quaint weatherboard cottage is welcoming retreat-seekers to a place that its custodians refer to as a ‘piece of Tassie paradise’. It’s located on the banks of the free-flowing Tyenna River, where water rushes from mountain peaks, through underground cave systems (its greatest depths below the surface still largely unexplored) on a long journey seaward. This is some of the coldest water in Tasmania, and some of the freshest in the world.
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Maydena Accommodation
Fern is an anti-hotel of sorts. Luxurious (complete with a giant stone outdoor bath), considered and comfortable, it feels worlds away from the island’s capital despite being just 1.5 hour’s scenic drive. However, this build didn’t mean an imposition on the adjoining rainforest nor did it require a big industrial-scale development. None of that exists out on these frontiers yet. Instead, it’s made of mostly upcycled and repurposed materials.
Named Fern Mt Field after the world-famous national park nearby, the method for this cottage’s renovation was very deliberate and its owners (your hosts) didn’t come upon this property by chance. Ben and Tess had felt the pull of this ancient, wild part of Tasmania for many years.
Maydena Accommodation
Before Fern
The couple became accommodation hosts a little by accident. Throughout the covid lockdowns when business was closed, they turned their hand to converting an old school bus bound for scrap metal into a comfortable one bedroom apartment (now shared with adventurous travellers and called Huntingdon Tier Forest Retreat). Such an exploration of what is possible when it comes to the creation and utilisation of human living spaces has captivated their interest ever since.
In their daily lives (Tess is a graphic designer and Ben a builder/joiner) they had been dealing with an ethical affliction. Working in his field since a young age, Ben’s passion for his craft and his intrinsic commitment to the environment were beginning to feel deeply incompatible; the building industry is notoriously unsustainable and a huge creator of non-recyclable waste. Participating in this type of problem meant a stirring unrest, alongside a concern both for the environmental consequences as well as the capacity for the earth to support a continual growth and largely non-regenerative resource model that is common in our modern society.
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The chance to revitalise Fern was another opportunity for Ben to use his expertise to re-purpose and re-create in a way that didn’t rely upon grand-scale developments or the creation of new lifecycle products. As much as possible, the run-down cottage was renovated with recycled materials, many saved from landfill. This ethos seems congruent with the home’s history; an almost-hundred-year-old depression era building, it’s of good bones, albeit clearly made from whatever local materials could be opportunistically sourced during those tough years. In this part of the world, houses were built for the families of bushmen in the times when the railway line (now decommissioned) was the only link with civilisation. Repurposed windows, mantle, curtains, weatherboards are just a few items utilised alongside carefully-chosen (new) building materials.
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Kitchen benches are made from impressive blackheart sassafras timbers, saved by Ben many years ago and long awaiting a special use worthy of these magnificent, centuries-old trees, which are thankfully no longer logged. An old hand tempered kitchen sink, originally made in Hobart, was salvaged from an inner-city renovation and carries the legacy of a craftsmanship all but lost.
Proudly, only antique or mid-century furniture can be found in the comfortable interior of Fern, however a few creature comforts such as a movie-screen protector do break the up-cycled and recycled mould. Fern is about immersing in nature; touching it whilst not disturbing it.
A quiet place to enjoy the surrounds, the sound of the river rushing past and of big mobs of black cockatoos squawking as they make their way through the valley. It’s a place for small groups of people to come together, reflect, luxuriate just a little and leave the tiniest of traces, or to rest either side of an expedition into some of the earth’s most untouched wilderness.