Coming Home with Samantha Youngman

from Edition No.7 ~ Scenic Road Magazine 2022

Scenic Road Field Guide

COMING HOME

For Tamborine Mountain locals, the surname Youngman is synonymous with history. Having spent many years living abroad before returning to their roots, Samantha & Ian Youngman are the new custodians of the Youngman home and property, Tallaringa. We sat down with them to find out what life has been like since returning to Australia, just before Covid hit our shores in 2019.

Can you please give a brief history of the home, when it was built, and what it was used for (from local knowledge we are led to believe it was Vonda’s Doctor’s surgery)? It is a very special year for our old home, turning 100 this year! The house and garden were first developed in 1922 by Ernest Curtis who planted many of the large trees that dominate the garden today.

Tallaringa was purchased by the Youngman family as a weekender in mid 1956 (however they enjoyed mountain life so much they moved permanently later that year). When Vincent & Vonda Youngman renovated it was clear that in those days the view was not the focus with a non-existent Gold Coast skyline. The old house had opaque windows and stood on stumps only 6 inches clear of the ground. After renovating and raising the house, Vonda established the Tamborine Mountain Medical Practice within their home (today it is our laundry with a little nod to the history of the room with the original sign up on the wall)

Vincent & Vonda’s son, John and wife Christine took over Tallaringa in 1984 and renovated the house extensively. They expanded the garden to the East and South with the southern garden completed in 2000. Over the next 3 decades thousands of people would walk through the beautiful gardens they had created through the Australia Open Gardens Scheme and it was considered a regional highlight. Numerous concerts and weddings have also been held in the gardens over the last 15 years.

Ian, being the son of John and Christine, you must have spent a lot of time here growing up. What are your most fond memories of the property? I feel so lucky to have grown up here. It truly was an unrestrained childhood with my days spent in nature exploring the rainforests, riding horses and disappearing for hours with my friends over the shelf. It was such a tight- knit community, everyone knew everyone back in those days, there was a freedom and wildness which I remember appreciating, even as a child.

When did you start living here? How long had you been abroad for, and Samantha what was it like working as an Interior Designer in NYC? What brought you home as family? We moved back to Australia in late 2019 after 12 years living in Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK and the USA. During those years Ian was working in technology for a global enterprise and I was an Interior Designer in New York (in between bringing up three children).

We both were yearning for a more meaningful way of life and that sparked the need for change in us (some might call this a mid-life crisis!). We knew we always wanted to settle in Australia but where and how had eluded us until our focus shifted to a tree change and the first visualisations of returning to live in Australia on a mountaintop behind the sea were born. It was a fortuitous move given we arrived home 3 months before the first murmurings of what would become COVID19. To have 25 acres to isolate on and for our children to be part of nature during a time when we had to be “locked up” was unbelievably good luck.

We love your aesthetic! How much did you renovate, and were there any “must keeps” in order to pay homage to the original home? To be honest we originally planned on knocking the whole place down and starting again, as with any old house the job felt huge and the house didn’t take full advantage of some of the best aspects of this property. But in knocking the existing home down we would be demolishing so much amazing history. We decided to work with what we had, pouring our hearts and souls into renovating the old Queenslander that has now sat on this land for 100 years!

Sam what inspires your design work? When I look around my own home it is filled with pieces with so much meaning. I have collections and bits and bobs I have picked up along the way on our travels. Everything reminds me of a place or a moment in time, an inherited gift makes me think of the person who first bought it. Seeing and feeling the personality of a person in their home inspires me more than anything.

I’m also incredibly inspired by colour. I am a true colourist and couldn’t live without colour in my life. If you are looking for white on white I am not the designer for you!

What do you love the most about the Scenic Rim and being back in Australia? The Scenic Rim is truly such a special region with so much to offer. As a child growing up in a region plagued by perpetual drought, I never wanted to live somewhere where water or lack of it was an issue. One of the things I love most about Tamborine Mountain in particular is the climate. The rainfall is high, the grass is green, nature surrounds us, it is serene and peaceful. We are a world away from our life lived on the edge of New York City. I now spend my days on our mower, looking out to the Pacific Ocean, listening to the birds instead of sirens and I have never been more content.

Without a doubt the greatest gift has been the amazing garden we are now the custodians of. Ian’s parents put their hearts & souls into developing the garden over the past 30 years and now we get to continue this legacy with beautiful established plants and outdoor spaces.

Our intention is to make our little part of the world as beautiful and purposeful as we can make it, together. We are in the early stages of developing what we now call

“Highgarden Estate” where we wish to offer the beautiful gardens and orchards as a venue for lunches, parties, concerts, picnics or whatever gorgeous event can be dreamed up.