The High Seas of Coastal Vintage
From underwater archaeological sites in the Aegean Sea to outrunning pirates in the Red Sea, John Caruso meets a local who has lived a life of adventure and now combines all her loves – travel, shopping, and homewares – into a successful business.
Like many of us, settling on a career in our teens or even early twenties can be elusive. Sally Oulton didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life.
“I’m a country girl growing up in Dubbo, and after school I wandered from job to job, eventually falling in love with cooking,” Sally shares. “I learned to cook in the UK at a place called Cookery at The Grange near Bath.
“From there I got a job cooking for seventeen German sailors on the Isle of Wight and there was this light bulb moment where I realised that these sailors got paid to sail around the world doing something they love and I knew I wanted a piece of that.”
Sailing, cooking, and sampling all the different foods in the northern hemisphere seemed worlds apart from the life Sally had known in Dubbo.
“I was eating food that was so removed from what I was exposed to growing up and combined with what I was experiencing on board this boat with the German sailors, I thought, ‘ok, I have to learn how to sail’, so I headed to the Whitsundays to do that,” she explains.
An offer to head to the Aegen Sea to jump onboard a vessel working on a 2,000-year-old shipwreck followed.
“I flew to Turkey and found myself amongst a group of women along with a male skipper and we sailed around Turkey and Greece. The owner of that boat was a lady who’d invested a lot of money into an underwater archaeological site which was fascinating; seeing all the artifacts being brought up from 30 metres down.”
Sally was learning the ropes, and not just the ones that make up a ship’s rigging. Understanding where to go and who to talk to in Palma de Mallorca saw her work and sail across the Mediterranean to The Maldives, through The Suez Canal and down to The Red Sea where the vessel she was on was chased by pirates.
“We we’re doing about ten or twelve knots and these two wooden longboats were following us,” she sais. “They were some distance off to begin with and then they were slowly closing in. Moving towards us, faster and faster.
“At closer range we could see they were armed with guns. The skipper of our vessel decided to ‘floor it’, to see
if we could outrun them. One of them stopped and soon after, the second one did the same and it turned back.
“We were very fortunate because we had no idea what would’ve happened.”
It was a scary experience mixed with some naivety, Sally admits.
“It was frightening. At the time I was told to go and hide in a cupboard in the laundry however, I had no idea what I would have done if they’d stopped our boat and jumped onboard,” she says.
I imagine as Sally opens up and talks about herself during social occasions, people would inevitably suggest she
pen a book.
“There are so many more adventures to have and more places to explore, with so many interesting parts of the world to see,” she says. “I didn’t do history at school however jumping onboard these boats and learning about the rich history of each location is fascinating.”
Opening a coastal homewares space seemed like the next logical step.
“When I’m sourcing products for Coastal Vintage, I enjoy delving into the history of each product,” she says.
“If I discover a clam shell in a garden that’s been in the family for a hundred years, the opportunity to sell it to somebody else to enjoy; that intertwining of travel and history excites me.
“There were a lot of people doing coastal homewares, but I wanted something different, and I thought, nobody’s doing vintage in the coastal style I had in mind.
“My nanna bought and sold antiques in the UK and my uncle did the same and that’s when I settled on Coastal Vintage, something with a point of difference. I started with $4,000 out of the garage of my home.”
Opening two days a week while her girls were at daycare, expanding to five days and growing the team to eight
staff members has led to a successful business a decade later.
About eighteen months ago, Sally also started operating as a wholesaler, selling direct to retail stores.
“I’ve always been a goal setter, setting out a list of what I want to achieve and going after them and sometimes you’ve got to take risks, otherwise you just won’t achieve anything,” she says.
You’ve heard the saying, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas? Apparently, the same goes for vessels on the open sea.
“True. What happens on the boat, stays on the boat,” Sally laughs. “I can tell you that I cooked for a Prince once however I didn’t know who he was until the fourth or fifth day when one of the guests spilled the beans.
“It was Prince George Furstenberg of Austria who was a lovely chap. That was in The Whitsundays on a 51-foot French built Beneteau.
“And my very last job overseas was in the Caribbean onboard a $25 million, 120-foot yacht owned by Canadian billionaire Ron Joyce who’s a co-founder of the Tim Hortons chain of restaurants.”
To fulfil her love of shopping, Sally has launched bespoke shopping tours to Bali with small groups of business owners as well as people who love interior designing and styling.
“I can show them different places to shop, where I love to go and take them to my favourite spa and restaurants.”
Two tours are already booked for September and October this year with bookings opening soon for May and September 2024.
Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter in the book of Sally’s life.
