The Shedquarters – Southern Wild Co’s Bush Studio in The Garden Room

The Shedquarters began life as an old shearing shed – a huge timber and corrugated iron room open to the bush and the weather, that would eventually hold a very different kind of work.

Over time it became my creative space in the bush outside Rockley – the place where Southern Wild Co quietly took shape, where long mornings began with the kettle on and evenings were marked by candlelight.

A few years ago photographer Hannah Puechmarin wrote to ask if she might photograph the Shedquarters for a book she was making about creative garden spaces.

At the time it felt like a simple yes.

She was gathering a collection of Australian garden rooms – sheds, workspaces and old outbuildings where creative life quietly unfolds. Places shaped slowly by hand and imagination.

What I didn’t know then was how much life would change before the book found its way back to me.

Not long after that first conversation, losing Matt in 2024 turned everything upside down.

The Shedquarters – the place we had made together – became something different. Still full of light and quiet ritual, but carrying a deeper weight of memory.

When the time came, Hannah arrived gently with her camera and we made the photographs anyway.

Recently a copy of the finished book arrived in the post. I opened it slowly, knowing the Shedquarters would be there somewhere inside. And still, when I found it, my breath caught.

Hannah has held the space in that quiet, luminous way she photographs. Light on timber. Shadow in corners. The hush that sits inside old walls.

More than the photographs though, it was the way she wrote about the Shedquarters that stayed with me, recognising it for what it truly was. A place of weather and waiting. Long mornings with the kettle on. Evenings marked by candlelight. A space where grief and hope sat side by side for a while.

To see it now resting among these other garden rooms – these intimate creative retreats scattered across Australia – feels like a gentle honouring of that chapter of my life, and of the life Matt and I built together here.

“In an old shearing shed of timber and light, grief and hope sat side by side for a while.”

The Garden Room will be published on 31 March 2026 by Thames & Hudson.

It’s a beautiful collection of Australian garden rooms – places where creativity quietly finds its footing among timber, weather and the garden beyond.

Seeing the Shedquarters resting among them feels like a small and gentle honouring of that time.

With Mother's Day not far away, it would also make a thoughtful gift – the kind of book to leave on the table and return to often.

You can pre-order the book here.