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Peter Stutchbury, winner of the Australian Institute of Architects’ prestigious Gold Medal in 2015, was born in Sydney in 1954. Though he lived for most of his childhood on the city’s North Shore, he also took advantage of the fact that he had relatives in rural NSW. Visiting them as often as possible, he developed an affinity with the land.
By the time he was a teenager, this love of the outdoors had extended to the ocean. He was a keen surfer and spent as much time as he could travelling the East Coast of Australia looking for the next big storm swell.
There are no cars. There’s no honking. There’s no sound really, says Andreas Pade, Rosewood Little Dix Bay’s managing director. You arrive on holiday and you’re a million miles away – you’re truly disconnecting from that other life you had before you arrived.
The Little Dix Bay story starts 60 years ago when conservationist Laurance Rockefeller spotted a secluded half-mile stretch of sand curved around a bay on Virgin Gorda’s coast. Being a Rockefeller, he bought the beach and the 500 acres beyond it and built an upscale resort – part of his eco-friendly RockResorts – that attracted the likes of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. It became part of the Rosewood group in 1993.
Thereâs a certain magic to arriving at Little Dix Bay for the first time, by night. After the long haul via Antigua to Tortola, the hotelâs catamaran whisked me over the moonlit waves for the final 25-minute hop to Virgin Gorda, the rum punch and sea breeze on the top deck blowing away any residual cobwebs.Â
I arrived in a broad bay surrounded by forested hills, to be greeted on the pier by my butler, and was delivered â somewhat punch-drunk â by buggy to my room. The swishing of the surf told me I was not far from the waterâs edge, but in the discreet exterior lighting of the resort, I could not make much out beyond the swaying palms. For the view, and a sense of orientation, I would have to wait till dawn.Â