F or hospitality stalwarts Rachel and Greg Power, the purchase of a 1.7ha parcel of land on Lake Dobson Rd nine years ago was so smooth their ultimate vision for a $5.5 million retreat seemed a fait accompli. Never in their wildest dreams did the couple, who relocated to Tasmania after buying Waterfalls Café and Gallery in the Mount Field National Park visitor centre a decade ago, imagine the struggle it would actually take to get the project off the ground, especially for a region crying out for accommodation options. But in late July the blood, sweat and tears were all worth it when the Mount Field Retreat finally rolled out the welcome mat, with the first four one-bedroom pods opened for business. “It’s still pretty surreal. Every now and then we sort of look around and go, hang on, we did this. We worked so hard for so long and we were just given the wrong advice in the beginning from the banks, they could say one thing and do another so we just could not work out where we had to stand as a business,” Rachel says. “Then when we eventually did, we were very close to getting the loan and Covid hit. But even then, I was still really positive because I was probably one of the few positive tourism and hospitality owners, I knew there’d be a silver lining coming out the other end.
“When we purchased the land the year after we moved, I think that was the only time that things were ever easy. I think we signed one form and that was it. We had to then put the DA [development application] in fairly quickly because the planning changes were coming into force and our land would no longer be able to support what we had planned for it. So we got the DA in and had that approved and that was a fairly long process, but then our original builders pulled out. At the time, it was a hard thing, but we knew that it was a good thing in the end. They didn’t want to do the project anymore because it was so far out and they restructured their business, but that’s what led us to Podmatrix and the result has been amazing. It is so much better than it ever would have been in those initial designs.” The Powers’ instantly fell in love with the Derwent Valley on a family holiday – but all for different regions. Originally from Canberra, Rachel worked in real estate while Greg was a photographer at the National Library. Six months after the couple’s second child was born, Rachel “started getting itchy feet” and started a business with her sister, but a few years later Greg declared he wanted to travel and photograph Australia and it set the wheels in motion for the eventual move.
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