Alex and Anna Martins have opened their luxury cabins in Myrup. Photo: Supplied.
Anna and Alex Martins were a ball of nerves when they unlocked the door to their newly built luxury cabins earlier this year but one step inside revealed it was everything they had imagined.
Set on farmland 12 kilometres from Esperance with views of Cape Le Grand National Park, Box Hill is Esperance’s newest high-end, adults-only retreat.
The off-grid accommodation opened earlier this month and Ms Martins said they already had bookings trickling in.
“We had our first guests the other day and they wrote the most amazing review which was so nice because they summed up everything we’ve been trying to achieve,” Ms Martins said.
“The kangaroos come all the way up around here, the emus wander past…
“It’s super relaxing, calm and completely switched off.”
The idea to build two cabins on their Myrup family property materialised in 2020 when they found themselves in Esperance after Covid interrupted their trip around Australia.
The couple and their two-year-old-daughter started their travels at their former Margeret River home but they soon came to love the Esperance region where Ms Martins grew up.
“Living here we were like: ‘it’s so nice and we love the view and being close to town but still feeling isolated and rural and secluded’, so we thought ‘why don’t we do something of our own’,” she said.
“Alex is Brazilian and he did tourism and business in Brazil and my background was in wine making in the Margaret River.
“We had been jointly working in the Mentawai islands working at a high-end resort over there so really all our skills have been combined into one.”
Ms Martins said building a business with three children under seven had been challenging.
She said the process had moved along organically and had taken nearly five years to complete because they wanted to make it as eco-friendly and sustainable as possible.
“I feel like in society at the moment no one reuses anything, so everything’s just in and out and we wanted everyone to come here to slow down, to realise what’s important in life is the slow life — all that stuff doesn’t really matter at the end of the day,” Ms Martins said.
“We are completely off the grid, 100 per cent solar power and rainwater so we’re not connected to anything apart from sewerage.
“Everything is in its rawest form so concrete, stone, glass, handmade Moroccan clay tiles, Italian marble, all the pottery is handmade ceramics, and 100 per cent linen sheers and bed covers.”
They even used rocks from their land to create the bold coloured fireplaces which hold a special meaning to the Martins.
“It’s Spongolite — it’s a sedimentary reef rock and it is found in two places in the whole of the world — this southwest corner of WA and in the south of Brazil,” Ms Martins said.
“We had a palaeontologist date the fossils and the rock and she said they’re between 30 and 50 million years old.
“It’s pretty wild so we had to make it a real focal point of our build.”
Ms Martins said it wasn’t easy for them to find someone to create their dream.
High demand for builders and long wait times during Covid meant they had to find an alternative way to construct the accommodation.
They came across a builder in Denmark, WA, who could build the cabins offsite and deliver them by truck.
“It’s a pretty amazing process – they drove these huge trucks onto site and they used these jacks and they jacked it up and the truck drove off and then they lowered it down onto site,” she said.
It was completely whole so we literally opened the door and walked in… It was nerve-racking because we’d only seen it maybe twice during the build process.
Box Hill has planning approval for four cabins but Ms Martins said they would see how the business progressed before making any decision to expand.
She said the first guests left a heartfelt review describing everything the Martins had hoped to create.
“This is more than just accommodation — it’s a true retreat, a place where you can slow down, soak in the beauty of Esperance and reconnect with nature,” the review said.
“It truly feels like you’re perched in the heart of Esperance’s natural beauty.”
