From Belgium to Byron Bay: How this homeowner built her dream bush house by the beach

• Owner: Annick Muylle
• Address: 22/3 Sallywattle Drive, Suffolk Park, NSW
• Type of property: An open and airy pavilion-style bush home by the beach
• Price guide: $3.7 million

Annick Muylle was nearing the end of her year-long round-the-world trip when she discovered the laid-back beachside town of Byron Bay on the far north coast of NSW in 1997.

Like so many others (A-list celebrities included), she was immediately captivated by it.

“I got taken by it to the point where I said, ‘I cannot go home,’ like many people do,” says Muylle, who is originally from Belgium and describes herself as being “a little bit hippy” back then.

After wrapping up her travels and breaking the news to her parents back in Europe (“They said, ‘Could you not pick a place closer?’ ”), she and her then-partner returned to the picturesque region to live, settling into an old Queenslander “up in the hills” of Possum Creek in the Byron hinterland.

Soon after, she was introduced to a home with which she became equally as captivated.

The house in nearby Mullumbimby featured exposed timber and corrugated iron, with large, open living spaces and wide decks that made the most of the region’s warm subtropical climate.

“It was like a dream, a total dream,” Muylle says. “We always thought, ‘Maybe one day, if ever we build, it will be like that.’ ”

In 2005, when she came across a black-and-white aerial photo of two overgrown blocks of land for sale close to the ocean in Suffolk Park – a 10-minute drive from Byron Bay’s town centre – she saw her chance and seized it, buying the adjacent lots to create one large space. 

Working with the same builders, Muylle created her own version of the open and airy pavilion-style house that she’d fallen in love with seven years earlier.

The home, which took two years to complete, is characterised by high ceilings, exposed timber beams and corrugated iron roofing and cladding.

Large windows frame views of the surrounding bush and the tea-tree-stained Tallow Creek, and bifold doors open to covered decks in every direction. 

“It’s a real inside-outside house, which we wanted because we appreciate the climate here,” Muylle says. “More than eight months a year, everything is open and we live outside … I don’t even have a dining table inside; it’s only outside.”

A large central deck, which floats above a long, 12.5-metre in-ground pool, acts as a thoroughfare between the main living spaces and a guest suite, where Muylle has hosted holiday-goers and visiting family and friends.

Her favourite spaces in the house, which she shares with her 21-year-old daughter Zoe and border collie Hugo, are a “magical” Balinese-inspired bathroom on the ground floor with a free-standing stone bath and outdoor shower, and a day bed on the second level that overlooks the manicured garden, bushland and creek.

“I spend a lot of time there because it’s quiet, it’s beautiful, the view is amazing – it’s a very special spot,” Muylle says.

“I’m in town pretty much every day … I’m very much always with people and when I come here, it is like a little sanctuary for me.”

Muylle, who owns a clothing boutique in Byron Bay’s centre, regularly walks her dog Hugo along the dog-friendly Tallow Beach, which she can access via a bush track from her garden.

“Everyone goes and walks their dog and you pretty much know everyone when you go in the early morning or later afternoon; it’s quite social,” she says.

Despite criticism by some that the town is not what it used to be, she says the features that inspired her to move across the world to live there 25 years ago remain intact.

“Byron Bay is all about nature and the ocean and that has not changed,” she says. “There’s still a lot of unique, family-owned boutiques.

SOLD - $3,000,000

22/3 Sallywattle Drive, Suffolk Park NSW 2481

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“With the kind of people that move here, it’s very cosmopolitan – I speak French every day, at least once or twice, with friends or at the shop. It’s a really beautiful mix of people.”

With her daughter planning a move to Sydney to study, Muylle has decided to put her house on the market.

She is planning on downsizing to allow herself more flexibility to travel but says Byron will always be home.

“I will always keep my roots in Byron Bay.”