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About & Partners
Built by people who wanted somewhere to stop.
A fashion entrepreneur, a sommelier turned botanical specialist, and a cultural advisor whose connection to the valley goes back generations.
Why we built it
Make the conditions, then get out of the way.
It started with something small. Chris wanted a place where you could put your phone away and not feel like you were missing anything.
That is harder than it sounds. What he was after was not a break from the week. It was an alternative to it.
We build each programme around the group and the place together. The idea is that guests leave with a renewed sense of their relationship to nature, and to themselves.
Chris Ristevski
So that is what we build. The privacy, the pace, the long table and everyone who plays a part in it, all arranged before anybody arrives, then held well enough that nobody has to think about it.
Why Kangaroo Valley
A journey of new discovery.
Kangaroo Valley was a place where different mobs would meet, at certain times of the year. We’d use it for trade, for ceremony, and for arranging kinship and marriage. It was a place where mobs came together to share information, but also to barter and trade.
Drew Longbottom, Yanaga Murru
That is why it is here. Drew Longbottom is a language practitioner and cultural advisor from the Jerrinja Aboriginal Community, and the cultural side is his to lead.
Guests are not expected to arrive knowing anything.
They came with little understanding, and that’s a good thing. You share something with them they’re not aware of, and if they have the ability to speak about it right then, you know they’re intrigued by it. That’s the biggest thing I took out of it.
Drew Longbottom, on the first weekend
What that means in practice
Rewiring the connections between people and planet.
Wylde exists to help people reconnect with each other and the natural world. Our longer-term ambition is to bring thoughtful hospitality and the regeneration of land together, beginning in Kangaroo Valley.
The drinks are made from plants growing on the property, and Byron identifies every one of them before it goes near a glass. Dinner comes from growers a couple of hours away at most. Drew leads the cultural side because it is his family’s Country and it is not ours to narrate. And the groups are small, which is partly the point and partly because none of this works with fifty people.
Sharing the knowledge of the plants is a symbiotic relationship. It’s our duty to pass that on. Wylde Systems is about reconnecting to the ecosystem.
Byron Woolfrey
How it holds together
Nobody here pretends to do all of it.
Wylde hosts and coordinates. Yanaga Murru lead the culture. Trolley’d create the botanical drinks. Invited chefs prepare the food. Optimum Experiences lead the guided paddling.
Who owns what, and how each contribution is credited, is set out on Attribution & Rights.
What travels
A way of hosting, not a building.
Most hospitality is a building with a service attached to it. Wylde works the other way round. What we make is a way of hosting: a place given over to one group, a day that opens with a Welcome to Country, drinks and food drawn from close enough to name them, and a handful of people who each hold their own part well enough that nobody else has to think about it.
Kangaroo Valley is where it begins, and for now where it lives. But none of the thinking behind it was ever specific to this valley.
When there is somewhere else, you will hear where it is and who is behind it.
Byron Woolfrey
Wylde Systems and Trolley’d
Founder. He built his name behind some of Sydney’s most inventive bars, qualifying as a sommelier along the way, before turning to native botanicals and the land they come from. He also founded Trolley’d, the eco-hospitality practice that has handled the drinks since the first weekend, with its own brand, equipment and recipes.
Chris Ristevski
Wylde Systems
Founder and director, and the owner of Lake David. Three decades building businesses across the Australian and Chinese fashion industries, including as co-director of swimwear label Bond-Eye Australia. He tends to meet people at the gate barefoot.
Drew Longbottom
Yanaga Murru
Founding partner and cultural authority, part of Wylde Systems from the first weekend. A language practitioner and cultural advisor from the Jerrinja Aboriginal Community, with a connection to the valley that goes back generations. Leads and approves all cultural programming under Yanaga Murru’s own authority.
How we work
Selective, and willing to say no.
We decline briefs that need late-night or high-volume use, that treat cultural programming as entertainment, that ask for imagery we cannot approve, or that arrive on dates where we cannot hold the standard.
Saying no to the wrong booking is how the right ones stay possible.
Contact
Speak to us directly.
Byron takes the enquiries. Write to hello@wyldesystems.com or call 0415 598 364.