In Her Element: Maddison

When I met Maddison at the cafe, she was already at an outside table. It was mid-morning. The chill had lifted, but we were both still dressed for the cooler day we'd predicted: me in jeans and a knit, Maddie in a wool skirt and a beige trench coat. The skirt was a Burberry, signature brown with white and red tartan, an op shop find she later admitted she'd consider selling if she ever needed the cash. For now, though, it's hers - the kind of piece, like the trench, that doesn't date and can be kept and reworn for a lifetime.

The conversation flowed easily, punctuated by warm interruptions from cafe-goers who were friends of hers: a mum balancing a bub on her hip while she got her morning fix, a couple post-school-run settling in for a slow brew. Sitting with Maddison in that kind of environment is a shortcut to getting to know her. She pays attention to the world around her, and the community here is as much a part of her as she is of it.

Let's dive in.

That's how Maddison describes herself, and once you spend a morning with her, it tracks. Her days don't run on a schedule. They run on weather, on the light, on what her son Sterling wants to climb onto next. There's no plan unless the sky calls for one. Sunny is for the beach. Rainy is for the op shop, or the couch, or drawing. The little sand pit Johnny built in the yard handles most of the in-between.

Mornings start with Sterling wriggling between her and Johnny, and the three of them watching the sun come up. "We get the light into our eyes and get our circadian rhythm rhythming," she says, with a slight giggle. "Coffee on, a babychino for Sterling, a matcha for Johnny, eggs or french toast." It's a kitchen she insists is too small for the three of them but somehow always fits. A wooden chair gets dragged over to the bench so Sterling can be eye-level with whatever is going on. Then Johnny goes to work and Maddison and Sterling head outside, because Sterling is an outside guy.

When we got onto the topic of hair, her history came out in chapters. There was the surfy, salty, mermaid-length era of her teens. Dry as anything but exactly what she wanted at the time. There was a friend's backyard in 2015, where she cut a full belly-button length off in one blunt go. And there was the road trip around Australia with Johnny, before Covid, where the heat in Yulara got to a point that buying clippers from the local IGA felt like the only reasonable response.

Johnny said, "Should we shave yours too?"

"Let's do it." So they did. She remembers being nervous in the moments before. Her hair had been part of her identity since she was a teenager. But the second the clippers came through, something shifted. "It really made me detach. Literally let go."

Strong. Bold. Beautiful in a way she hadn't expected to feel. She thought about doing it again postpartum, didn't, and is now growing it back slowly with no particular agenda.

Her routine is barely a routine: brush it morning or night, plait it before bed so it doesn't dread up overnight (her hair is fine but plentiful, with a texture that mats at the first hint of salt), a bit of rosemary oil for the scalp. That's it. Oh, sometimes a flower clip.

Her skincare is similarly stripped. Three splashes of cold water in the morning, pat dry, a few drops of facial oil. She's used a cleanser exactly once as an adult, and only because her mum bought it for her. A wide-brimmed hat instead of sunscreen, and picking her hours in the sun rather than coating herself in product to extend them. "Sunscreen has its place. But our skin is an organ. It needs the sun. We don't want to taint the barrier between the two."

That kind of thinking, she says, came mostly from her mum. Health and wellness, but the natural and organic version of it. Her mum moved from New Zealand at nineteen and packed that ethos with her.

On what the next generation should know

When I asked what she'd want the next generation to know about hair and skin and self-care, she didn't talk about products. She talked about labels. "Read the back of the packaging. Don't just jump onto something because it's really popular, or because someone you follow is using it - they might have no idea what's in it. Your skin is the biggest organ you've got. Everything gets soaked in."

She'll tell you she doesn't really have a beauty regime, and being a mum means she doesn't prioritise one. But what she does have, minimal as it is, she's chosen carefully. A few good products. A lot of ocean. Time outside. Skin that isn't asked to do much except exist.

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What 'In Her Element' means to her

"Being in your comfort zone. Being in your home. The place that makes you feel like you. That makes you feel happy, fulfilled. Just being happy within yourself."

Beautiful moments of Maddison and Sterling captured in their coastal home, photographed by Anthea Christie.