A Sunshine Coast hinterland escape with Angie Kent

Old friends, matching outfits and a hinterland farm they call their own.

Angie Kent is perhaps best known from her scene-stealing couch commentary or her 2019 turn as the Bachelorette. But at heart, she’s a self-described “hinterland girly” with a rescue Cavoodle named Chicky and a standing annual date she’d rearrange almost anything to keep.

Every year, Angie and her two oldest friends, Lauren and Cameron, pack the dogs, the matching outfits and an embarrassing amount of cheese, and disappear to Mayan Farm Villas, a rammed earth retreat deep in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. The three have been close since childhood, a bond that turns every reunion into something joyfully unguarded.

“When we go away together, we’re all just kids again,” she says. “It brings out our inner child. I love that feeling.”

The moment it starts

The holiday begins before they even reach the farm. Angie flies back from wherever the year has taken her, her friends pick her up, and they hit the road. The official holiday, though, begins in the Kin Kin township. First stop? The Kin Kin Hotel, where local bakery Black Ant serves up its tasty and freshly baked pastries, and sourdough.

“Pulling into Kin Kin, buying all the local produce, wines, charcuterie board items and other goodies…” she says. “That’s when it starts.”

Off grid on the paddock

Mayan Farm Villas is not what most people picture when they think Queensland holiday. No surf. No Hastings Street. No crowds. What there is: two rammed earth villas that feel, Angie says, like being on a Tuscan farm, a fire pit, plunge pool and hinterland views. “It’s like nowhere I’ve ever been to before,” she says. “Very European, very rustic, very beautiful.”

The itinerary runs entirely on instinct. Angie cooks. There’s always bugs and crab, sashimi and cheese. They change into their matching outfits, an op-shopped tradition where everyone wears that year’s favourite saying on a shirt. “We’re just real little dorky babies when we’re together,” she laughs. Then comes the alphabet game after a few sherbets, which nobody ever finishes.  “It’s our little yearly thing,” she says.

The best hour of the day

Around five in the arvo’, after the plunge pool, they head to an adjoined paddock with the dogs and watch the sky turn pink over the hinterland. The phones are untouched. The conversation turns to everything missed over the year, the things you only say in person to people who have known you long enough to get it.

“We just get to be ourselves,” she says. “No judgment. We’re all so weird in our own ways.” She pauses. “Why would you not want to go away with your three best friends where you can be your weirdest self, off grid on a paddock? It sounds so good I feel like I’m making it up.”

Queensland’s best kept secret

Kin Kin sits about 30 minutes northwest of Noosa, but most visitors have never heard of it. Angie thinks that’s a shame. “When you think of Queensland, you think of the beach,” she says. “You forget how beautiful the hinterland is.”

Angie’s connection runs deeper than a holiday. Her nan grew up barefoot in nearby Pomona, riding horses to school. “When I drive through Pomana, it’s so nice to think of my nan as a little girl,” she says. “And here I am, holidaying near there now.” It’s a feeling of closeness that never leaves her.

While the trip is three nights, Angie says it’s never long enough. “You get that post-holiday comedown where you’re just like, oh, and we have to wait a whole year again.” She’s already counting down.

Start planning that holiday feeling at Queensland.com