Amsara – The West Australian Review, November 2009
By Megan Anderson
Few serious east coast foodies haven’t darkened the doorway of The Essential Ingredient. Don and Jan Hodgson established the mail order provedore and cookware store from their home in Sydney’s Glebe in 1986. It now has seven retail stores and stocks the kind of edibles, food books and copper pots that send even the most hardened chefs into an aspirational lather.
The Hodgsons spent much of the past 20 years trawling the world sourcing wares. With one eye on the latest gadgets and the best saffron oil, their imaginations were also piqued by the hospitality experiences they encountered along the way. From the south of France to northern Italy and Spain, they compiled a mental scrapbook of their best stays in boutique lodgings, with a view to one day creating a coveted, food-focussed getaway destination of their own.
Cue semi-retirement in Broome. They bought a property at the northern end of Cable Beach in 2002 and called it Amsara, an Afghan name that connects it with the region’s famous camels. When they relocated from Sydney in 2007, they set about transforming it into something approaching paradise.
The vast lawn, complete with a shady hybrid gum tree straight out of a children’s fantasy, makes an ideal sunset-viewing platform. A coconut grove heralds the lagoon-shaped pool, whose shape reflects the actual lagoon below. The pool’s edge drops off into pindan-tinged bushland.
In the mango orchard-shaded house, internal walls came down and bi-fold screens went up along the wide verandas, now strewn with lounge furniture. A pokey annexe was converted into two distinctive and roomy guest suites – Treetop and Sunset – and filled with artisan furniture and flair. Jan’s dream kitchen (think multiple fridges, perfectly placed storage and a covetable tally of gadgets) was pivotal to the production. Her exquisite canapés and artfully rendered meals would become the hallmark of a stay at Amsara, which opened its exclusive doors for business in July this year.
“I always wanted to cook but didn’t want to have the stress of a restaurant,” says Jan, who now flexes her considerable talent with carpaccio, wanton-wrapped prawns and mini frittatas for up to six guests at a time. A table set up under the lawn’s centrepiece tree is where both hosts and guests laze for long stints when they are not floating on a li-lo down the current in the lagoon, or exploring a deserted stretch of Cable Beach.
Don and Jan admit they took “about two minutes” to synchronise with the fabled Broome time, if slightly longer to acclimatise to the pace of progress. Tradesmen were booked but went crabbing instead. Acquaintances promised to call but took several months to get around to it. After the bustle of Sydney, it was bewildering. But they’ve come to enjoy the idiosyncrasies of the place – even the fact that they’re now living with a cyclone shelter – and have settled into a new rhythm of their own.
Suddenly the words gubinge, jigal and sandpaper fig are part of their vernacular. They’ve familiarised themselves with the Kimberley vegetation and, like true foodies, have embraced its bush tucker properties. In the bush block below the house, they’ve planted 520 boab trees (another 400 are planned), not just for their quirky beauty but for the anti-oxidant, anti-carcinogenic and Vitamin C properties of their seed pod pith. They’re also expecting demand for the Vitamin C-laden berries of the gubinge (Kimberley plum).
Sowing the land with sustainable crops is both a commercial interest and insurance against misguided future development. They’ve adopted a long term vision to their planning and plantings. “If I was 40, we might be able to live off this land,” says Don, who is almost 60. “But since things are slow to grow and I’m not, it’ll be ready for whoever buys the place down the track.”
Growing their own – including a faster growing crop of vegies and herbs – is part of the paradise found formula. The more edibles on hand, the fewer visits to town (about 20 minutes away) required. With surrounds as sybaritic as this, once a week in “civilisation” is about enough.