Force of NATURE

A young family's off-the-grid bush escape in South Africa's untamed Little Karoo blends modern campaign style with Provençal sensibility

- JESSICA ROSS

There are few scenes as idyllic as luxuriating in an outdoor tub in the middle of the South African bush, G&T in hand, quietly listening to the rising cacophony of birdsong and stridulating insects floating through the valley at dusk. For Samantha and William Mellor, this calming ritual is the essence of Cabine du Cap, their weekend bolt hole hidden away in the bush surrounds of the Western Cape's Klein Karoo. Immersed among rugged tufts of indigenous plants and undulating uninhabited landscape as far as the eye can see, the bath scene resembles something out of a Sydney Pollack movie.

'It all started with a dream to have an outdoor tub,' says Samantha, who carefully planned the placement of their open-air custom galvanised steel bath: just close enough to the edge of their deck to feel plunged within the surrounding scrub, and far enough from the roofing to have an eyeful of star-washed sky at night. 'We sometimes put on the whole Out of Africa soundtrack, sit in the bath and watch the sun set,' she explains with a laugh. 'It's a bit sentimental but we embrace it?

When the couple first alighted on the property, located some two to three hours' drive from Cape Town just off the famous R62 motorway, the existing ramshackle boma was dwarfed by its majestic environment. It was really just a piece of land. The boma was falling apart, but it was the first place we looked at and we could see its potential, Samantha explains. The couple, their three-year-old daughter, Francesca, and chocolate brown Labrador, Lacoste, started visiting on weekends, travelling up a precarious road to the boma, where they would spend days improving the infrastructure and nights listening out for the strange sounds of nearby wildlife.