Residency Notes. (01)
An analogue archival of places we stay.
Recently, a beautiful reader of ‘Catching Shower Flowers’ reached out and asked if I would ponder the idea of starting a small and visual series dedicated to our travel residencies, an archive of sorts of all the strange and beautiful places us Guinery’s have found ourselves.
Not a silly idea at all…
This is something I already do, in a less expanded way, through socials, sharing the places we stay, little visual glimpses and stories as we move about—but having it live here, alongside the longer, more in-depth letters, feels like it could become something more considered and sprawled out. A lovely more lengthy travel addition to Catching Shower Flowers.
I think I’d like to keep this part open. Free to all, without a paywall… and then allow the more intricate pieces to sit where they already do, with my paying readership.
I’m not one for gatekeeping. I genuinely love sharing the places we stumble into and the spaces that end up holding us for a while. There is something about it that feels a bit like a treasure hunt, looking for small, surprising beauty in unfamiliar corners.
And in some ways, it feeds my practice as a writer… The art of noticing a room, a light, the feeling of a place, it always seems to find its way back into the larger bodies of work I am writing here, even if I don’t realise it at the time.
And so it makes all the sense to me, to start a visual residency journal.
I have archives and archives of photography—grainy film captures of corners and pathways and windows and table settings of places we have called home for both short and longer stints in time, sitting in folders on my lap top. It makes sense to archive it all here, where people come, for a longer and more thoughtful read.
So this is her idea, the beautiful reader, that suggested it—and this is me turning it into a new series called Residency Notes, and this is my first entry, 001.
So may I introduce to you, Residency notes, 001, Asfield, Sydney.
And before you begin, the soundtrack to this Residency is below, press play:
Residency Notes: 001
Stay: Ashfield, Sydney,
When: Feb 2026
Length of stay: 2 weeks
Visit the stay: Rose Markie Cottage
The Space: Rosemarkie has three spacious bedrooms, each with a queen bed, a large well-equipped kitchen, separate lounge and dining areas, a bathroom with shower plus laundry with second toilet. It features a beautiful outdoor area for meals, and luscious garden full of secret nooks, together with an outdoor shower. Guests have access to the entire house and garden. There is free, unrestricted street parking and the most stunning tree filled park across the road.
Residency notes:
Admittedly, suburbia often has me digging a bit deeper to see and find the beauty, but I can report, I found it many times over, during our stay here.
I imagine majority of our stays look logistically coordinated, planned and well thought out, but in truth, most of the stays I have shared more recently (mostly last year) were “night before” bookings—booked from a place of having no where else to land—us just trying to hover in Sydney for a rainbow of reasons, with no concrete accomodation beneath us.
This is where my gift for “seeing the beauty” leads the way and my other cape—improvisation, activates. It’s not all smooth, but somehow it always works out.
We found this stay literally the night before we needed to be out of a longer stay we had in Terrey Hill and as we packed up and cleaned, we still didn’t really know where Ashfield was…nor did we know what we’d be arriving to.
Rose Markie Cottage was very generous to open its heritage door to our family where I was gifted the artful opportunity to catalogue our stay, with analogue photography alongside a more candid style of capture which you can find here in my highlights under the title “Ashfield Stay”.
We landed in Ashfield and at first, it felt a little disoriented.
The area felt unknown, the roads felt a more busy than where we had just come (3 months in the bush out back of Terrey Hills where there was bird-song and trees and quiet).
Usually, when we arrive somewhere new, there’s a rhythm we fall into quite easily. A short stay doesn’t tend to unsettle us, we move through it lightly. But this past year was different with how stays have felt.
With our home in storage for the entirety of last year, there was an added and strange layer to every place we landed. Almost like a pressure for it to feel homelike the minute we walked in, because home didn’t exist anywhere else.
With the knowing of this repeated feeling, we travelled with small pieces of familiarity for the larger parts of last year—plates, doona covers, even a lamp whose light we know well. Little things lend to that feeling of home.
When you don’t have an anchor, stays begin to feel different. There is more resting on them. Not so much for me and Caleb, but for our daughters. Their experience sat at the front of our own experience, and as parents, we found ourselves trying to create a sense of stability within something inherently transient—feeling their wobbliness in it all and working overtime to hold it whilst moving through our own wobbly feelings (the ones that come in most transitions, no matter how nomadic you think you are).
So when we arrived to the cottage surrounded by the suburbs and traffic noise and new smells and sounds Caleb and me moved into “home-maker” pretty quick. Here’s what we did to make the newness of being at Rose Markie feel like home for our girls, within 30 minutes of arriving.
We always pray a blessing when we arrive to new spaces.
Music on (we have songs that feel like ours), windows opened and all our own sheets and doonas on the beds. The bedding provided was beautiful but there’s something about your own linen when you are in a big season of unknown.
Our travelling familiar lamp (which has a warming glow) placed in the girls room (they opted to all sleep together on the first night). The lamp is a little earmark, of home. It has come with us everywhere this past year.
Within 30 minutes we could feel ourselves leaning into the new space, making it feel like home for the next two weeks. Below is a quick iphone photo of how the girls shared room came up after making it feel a bit more like theirs. (Note the traveling lamp in the corner).
On the first morning in any new space or place we stay, I seek out a few things on the map to ground myself and meet with a place—I usually look for the local Wholefoods store and more importantly before that—the local coffee shop. Two places that will behold our staples for the week. Food and coffee.
Pretty quickly I scouted out Unique Wholefood which which has a very large section of fresh organic fruit and veggies with everything else you could possibly need. Loco love, snacks the kids love, and a herb and medicinal Isle I spent too much time in. Across the road from Unique Wholefood is a Harris Farm which was super helpful for all our other goods.
Rose Markie Cottage is situated across the road from a beautiful tree-filled park and 200 metres from the front door is a sweet little coffee shop called “Coffee Island” with good enough coffee… I only drink one coffee a day, so I usually like to make a full ritual of it, particularly when I am visiting new areas, so I tried a few places, and ended up spending majority of my mornings at Happyfield, which is almost the happiest place on earth. Aesthetically its 10/10 and the coffee matched.
If you are a Sydney local, I highly recommend a day trip just for the experience, Happyfield can be found in the suburb next to Ashfield—Haberfield. Have a look here to pick your interest. It’s also only a 20 minute walk from the front door of the Rose Markie Cottage if you like a decent morning stroll. You need to cross Parmatta road to get there, but majority of the walk is through Haberfield and that in itself is a walk worth having, the houses along the way are all heritage protected and certainly a beautiful sight for the quaint at heart to witness, whilst pursuing coffee.
Next door to Ashfield is another cool suburb I stumbled upon— Summer Hill, which is also a lovely day stroll for coffee and light shopping. You can find an incredible children’s vintage exchange “To The Moon Kids” which is so thoughtfully curated and situated next door to the most beautiful toy store “Monkey Puzzle Toys”.
Theres also a vinnies across the road if you like a casual thrift, where I found the most beautiful plate (see above) and it is situated alongside a huge strip of eateries and other coffee shops.
A vibe.
The biggest regret of my stay was not realising that the Inner west sustainability hub was just around the corner, I only figured this out as we were packed up leaving Ashfield for our next stay, I drove past it on our way to Little Bay Beach and was so disappointed I missed such a gem.
Next time.
We spent quite a few days escaping the heat and resting in the beautiful air conditioned space. Rose Markie a large home, so there are many nooks to escape and play and be. The kitchen is also newly renovated and is a dream to cook in, especially after cooking for 6 months in a hotel kitchenette and a camp style kitchen.
I loved the flow of the kitchen and how it over looked the dining area which opens up to a sweet little outdoor dining area and garden. It worked really well for all meals, and being that my daughters mostly love being outdoors, it made it really easy. I could be cooking and still be having conversations with them whilst they played outside. We did the majority of our dinners on the patio and it was a beautiful way to close out Summer.
It was clear during our stay that Rose Markie Cottage has a rich history, one that has been a place held and loved by a few generations of family. The Cottage is well loved, and maintained and has all the quirks that come with a heritage home.
We loved our stay here and were so grateful to be hosted by Josh and his family.
To enjoy the charm of this beautifully renovated 1890s heritage home, on the doorstep of Summer Hill click below.
Thank you for being here. Paid subscriptions allow me to continue writing these love-letters and to maintain the practice of writing itself. Thank you for staying, for sowing, and for reading with the kind of maturity that understands this place is a practice, not a performance. What an exhale that is. I could never have imagined that I would be writing a life like this in real time—from the middle of it all: dining rooms, late nights, airbnbs, transitions, different countries—and that anyone would want to read it. Even more surprising still, that some of you would choose to support it. After the year that has been, gratitude has begun gathering for me in the smallest places. And this space, this readership, is one of them.
I feel deeply thankful for it.
Love Tess
ps. If you are a paid reader and you missed the “fill in the gaps” piece—catch up below…