01 · Our Story
Witchcliffe · Margaret River Region
The place we chose to make our own.
Vineside grew from years of travel, a deep connection to the Margaret River Region and a belief that the stays we remember most are often the smaller, more personal ones.
Our story02 · Why Vineside
Some places stay with you long after you leave.
Travel has always been a big part of our lives. And the stays we remember most were rarely the biggest or the fanciest.
They were the smaller places where someone had thought about the details. Where the welcome felt personal, the recommendations were genuinely local and the space made it easy to settle in.
Those experiences quietly shaped what we wanted Vineside to become — somewhere thoughtful without feeling overdone, comfortable without losing its connection to the place around it.
Not more. Just more considered.
03 · Meet Your Hosts
Local knowledge, personally shared.
Vineside is independently run — and we live right here too.
Between us, our backgrounds span Margaret River, Perth, design, technology, travel and a lot of time spent exploring the quieter corners of the region.
Hayley
A born-and-bred Margaret River local, Hayley grew up exploring this landscape — from its beaches and forests to the back roads and small local places that rarely make the usual lists.
Her background is in web design and digital marketing, with much of Vineside's identity, detail and guest experience shaped through that same design-led eye.
Luke
Luke grew up in Perth and came to know the Margaret River Region through weekends, holidays and eventually making a life here together.
After years working as a web developer and software engineer, his growing passion for the quieter southern end of the region eventually led us to create Karri & Cape Collective — our private touring business.
Luna
Luna may genuinely be the friendliest dog in the world. She'll happily follow you down to the firepit — usually with one of her toys in her mouth — in the hope of convincing you to start a game.
When she isn't recruiting new playmates, there's a good chance she's off trying to chase a rabbit.
Lily
Lily is one of the smartest animals you'll ever meet. She takes a slightly more contemplative approach to life — finding a sunny spot, settling in and quietly watching the world go by.
She seems to notice absolutely everything, and we suspect she's usually several steps ahead of the rest of us.
Away from our screens, we're happiest exploring back roads, finding small cellar doors, wandering through forests and discovering quiet stretches of coastline.
04 · Before Vineside
Before there was Vineside, there was a yurt, a shipping container and a very long wait.
We bought this patch of Witchcliffe just before COVID, expecting a fairly straightforward journey from empty block to finished home.
Instead, the build stretched over more than four years — and home took a few unexpected forms along the way.
Looking back, those years became an important part of the Vineside story.
The first version of home was a yurt.
We lived and worked from here through COVID, with Lily still a puppy. Around it we built an outdoor camp kitchen, bathroom, laundry and toilet, gradually working out how to make life on the property function around us.
Most of our meals were cooked over the wood fire inside or outside on the BBQ. It was simple, hands-on and very different from the finished home we'd originally imagined.
Living, working and building as we went.
It wasn't always comfortable, but living here made us extraordinarily familiar with the property — its weather, its seasons, its light and the way we actually wanted to live on it.
We weren't waiting to live here. We already were.
What arrived was a shipping container. What we made from it became home.
The container arrived as exactly that — a shipping container.
Before the conversion had even begun, we were already working from inside it during COVID.
Hayley designed the entire interior and project-managed the conversion, organising the contractors and trades while we also completed a significant amount of the work ourselves.
The container sat down near where Vineside's firepit is today.
From an empty steel shell to somewhere we could call home.
What those years taught us
Living in the yurt taught us what we actually needed. Designing and building the container taught us how much thoughtful planning could change the way a space felt.
We became intensely conscious of circulation, storage, sightlines, light, where things belonged and the small decisions that make everyday living easier.
When it finally came time to shape Vineside, those lessons came with us.
Every part had to earn its place — but nothing should ever feel compromised.
05 · The Story of This Place
The place came first. The name followed.
Vineside sits on 2.2 acres at the edge of a quiet Witchcliffe neighbourhood, where our native garden runs towards a neighbouring vineyard and a small pocket of bush.
It feels rural here — birds moving through the garden, kangaroos passing through from time to time and dark skies once the sun disappears — yet Margaret River is only around 12 minutes away.
Witchcliffe
We were drawn to the quieter southern end of the Margaret River Region.
Witchcliffe has always felt a little different — close enough to Margaret River for everything to be easy, but with a slower, more rural rhythm of its own.
It is the kind of place where the landscape still feels close: vineyard rows, bush, birdsong, changing weather and long stretches of dark sky at night.
The name
The Wadandi Track is only a short walk from the property.
Head north and Witchcliffe is around 1.5 kilometres away.
Head south and the trail passes the vineyard beside us — the same vineyard that eventually gave us the simplest possible name for where we were.
Vineside.
Close to the region. Closer to the quiet.
This place has a story far older than ours.
Vineside sits on Wadandi Boodja — Country cared for by the Wadandi people for countless generations.
We acknowledge the Wadandi people as the Traditional Custodians of this land and recognise their continuing connection to Country, culture and community.
We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and to the generations who continue that connection today.
Wadandi Boodja.