Ballarat suits travellers who want heritage streets, good coffee, and the lake without a long drive from Melbourne. Settler & Sons is a Californian bungalow used as a family base and, for now, a boutique stay for guests.
Kirby and Jack Kaye run a sheep and cropping property at Nowhere Creek, north-west of town. Ballarat was about being nearby to schools, hospitals, friends, and everything being far out in the bush can not provide. They bought a bungalow with period detail — leadlight, high ceilings, timber floors — and spent months making it feel like theirs before welcoming paying guests.
Settler & Sons is the name they gave the house: a nod to the farm, to succession, to raising children on country and still needing a place in town.
The layout works for a small group or a family: sleeping spaces carved out of classic bungalow rooms, living areas that gather around heat and light in a cold goldfields winter. Kirby’s eye for interiors shows in second-hand and local finds, muted walls with popss of colour, and textiles that soften hard edges. It reads as country taste in a city postcode.
Location is the quiet sell. Lake Wendouree, the botanical gardens, and the Wendouree strip are within easy walking distance; the CBD is close enough for dinner and home again. Guests get Ballarat’s culture without parking stress or anonymous apartment blocks.
The Kayes still use the house themselves — weekends in town remain a treat — so the stay is intentionally small-scale and personal. That may change when the children are older and the bungalow becomes weekday family HQ full time. For now, booking here means stepping into an in-between chapter: farm on one horizon, pavement on the other.
Book your stay at Settler & Sons
