UNYOKED

Words by Eliesha Rae. Pictures by Sammy Hawker.

These days, with everyone being always "on", connected all the time, people are increasingly paying attention to an innate, almost primitive desire to “get out there”, to escape and experience the few wild places we have left. That feeling, it's hard to describe, but everyone knows it, and more and more people are starting to pay attention to it.

Cabin-stay company Unyoked, is twin brothers, Chris and Cameron Grant’s “antidote” to what is maybe one the most common of challenges of our day-to-day, the issue of mistaking “making a living for having a life.”

Since the company’s inception in 2015, Unyoked has been flooded with reservation requests from seclusion-seeking Sydneysiders. The cabin start-up’s two New South Wales locations currently have a wait list of over 4000. And finally, Victorians can find Unyoked cabins a little bit closer to home. Unyoked’s latest additions, Yogi & Wal, lie less than an hour’s drive from Ballarat Central, or two hours from Melbourne, at the spectacular Blue Pyrenees Estate winery in Avoca. According to Cam, Blue Pyrenees is “almost the perfect location, because the sites are secluded yet accessible, (they’re) wild yet only two hours from Melbourne CBD, and they offer guests the best of both worlds – a State Forest next door, full of epic adventure or a visit to the cellar door.”

The criteria that needs to be met for an Unyoked cabin location is pretty stringent, but not necessarily easy to pinpoint. They must be two hours from the city and completely secluded (as Cam puts it “Can’t hear or see another human from the site”), and – maybe most importantly – have a certain… je ne sais quoi. The brothers refer to it as “wilderness vibes”, but are pretty upfront about the fact that it’s not that easy to define, “(it’s) a bit harder to explain, it’s more of a feeling, that sense when you get a tingling at the back of your neck when wandering into a clearing and staring at a mountain, or a stream running through a forest. It’s the feeling of things being in perspective, that only nature can give you.”

Unyoked’s typical guests are “(mostly) within the 22-35 bracket, living in the city but for the outdoors. They're professionals, freelancers or creatives, and are adventurous, free-spirited and already feel a connection with those wild places.” And the wild, free-spirited ethos is clear in every aspect of the business - from the set-up, all the way down to the finest details, even in the names of the cabins themselves. “Each of our cabins is named for people Chris and I’ve met overseas on our travels over the years who were ‘unyoked’,” Cam explains, “Free spirits who gave into the nomad inside them and (are living) our philosophy every day. They’re all real folks who’ve made an impact on our lives, and the idea is that their ideals are ones that all of us should embrace at least a little to get a bit more balance in our modern lives.”

These minimalist, architecturally designed houses are equipped with (almost) everything a burnt out city dweller could possibly need to escape the rat race for a couple of blissful, tech free days. “Our cabins are built so they're totally off the grid,” explains Cam. “Solar power, composting toilet, rainwater capture, and importantly we choose to build them on trailers, which does increase cost, but it allows us to move the cabins around and get them into these unique wilderness spots without the damage to the environment that a large truck would cause.”

“We also like to push our guests limits in terms of being in the wild, we only have 1 or sometimes no power points and prefer our guests to charge their devices using portable solar chargers so they feel connected and appreciate the process.”

As it stands – all you need to bring is the food (and maybe a change of clothes and some toiletries, but that’s up to you) and even that could be set to change in the near future; “We’re working on something so they don’t even have to think about (food),” Cam continues, “The whole idea is you can be in the need of getting off the grid, jump in the car, and in less than 2 podcasts time you’re in the middle of a remote location with nothing else to worry about (where you) can sit back, disconnect, and balance some adventure with doing a bit of nothing for a while.” So… when do we leave?