Sweet dreams are made of this

When Andre and Keryl de Haan stumbled upon their Coolamon dream home - originally a bank and manager’s residence built in 1890 - the timing wasn’t quite right. Two years later, when ‘Sweet Briar’ came on the market the couple snapped it up, turning it into a delightful bed and breakfast.

The immaculately preserved Sweet Briar B&B and Cottages sit perched at the end of Coolamon’s main street, surrounded by beautiful country gardens. It’s easy to see why Andre and Keryl fell in love with the place.

The couple were returning from Melbourne to their Sydney home when they decided to make a detour to Coolamon to visit old friends.

“We were walking around town when our eldest son, who was four at the time, fell over on the footpath and hurt his hand,” Keryl relates. “We were passing Sweet Briar and our friend knew the lady who lived there, so we went inside to get our son a Band-Aid. As soon as we stepped through the door, we were enchanted.”

“We tried to buy it but it was during the financial crisis and we couldn’t sell our house in Sydney. We had to let go of the dream but it planted the seed in our minds. The idea of moving to the country was very appealing to us.”

The family returned to normal life in the Blue Mountains where Keryl worked as a registered nurse and Andre had a position with Telstra. Two years later, Andre had a hunch to Google ‘Coolamon real estate’.

“It was for sale again, admittedly for a lot more money!” He says.

“I flicked Keryl a link with the message, ‘Do you want to open up this can of worms?’ She wrote back, ‘Absolutely!’

“We understood that once we’d sold it would be hard to get back into the Sydney market, but we were quite willing to jump and take the risk.”

The house sold in eight days and, before they knew it, the de Haans were on the road to Coolamon, moving into Sweet Briar in 2011.

“Our kids turned four and eight on the weekend we moved to Coolamon and our friends held a party for them at the park, which was a great introduction to the community,” Andre says. “Sweet Briar was a blank canvas so we were really starting from scratch.

This turned out to be a positive because it enabled us to grow into the business at our own pace.”

“Once bookings started picking up we realised that most of the people who stay here know someone in the area. This helped us to meet more people and make friends in the community.”