On a far-flung shore of Bruny Island, an interior stylist breathes new life into a century-old beach shack.
Words Amanda Ducker
Photography Lisa Cohen
Tess Newman-Morris remembers a recent Christmas night on Bruny Island, off the south-east coast of Tasmania, when she slipped out in her nightie to kayak alone on glowing water. “I was rowing through bioluminescence,” she says. “The sea was just lighting up as I paddled.”
After spending so much time at her Bruny shack in recent years, Newman-Morris knows bioluminescence sometimes signals ecological disruption, so she’s not in a hurry to repeat the experience. “But at the time, it was amazing,” she says, gazing westward over the bay towards Satellite Island.
A surprise weekend on Satellite in 2012, organised by her husband, Jack, marked the beginning of a new dimension to their lives. In a way, though, the seed was sown long before then – a longing passed down for a place imagined more than known, half-real, half-mythic.
