LIFE UPDATE

A Few Big Years: Coming Home, a New Career, and a Festival in the Valley

If we have not spoken in a while, buckle up. A fair bit has changed.

A few years ago you would have found me on the other side of the world, in Canada, a long way from the red dirt and big skies I grew up with. Today I am back home, I have started a brand new career, and somewhere along the way I accidentally helped build a festival. People keep asking me what I have been up to, so I figured I would just write it all down in one place.

Here is the short version of a few very big years.

Coming home

Canada was good to us. The mountains, the snow, the people, the whole adventure of living somewhere completely different. But the longer we were away, the louder home got. There is a particular kind of light over the Central West of New South Wales in the late afternoon that I could not stop thinking about. Family, mates, the valley, the slower pace that somehow lets you do more. So we packed up our life and pointed it back at Australia.

Coming home was not a step backwards. It was the thing that made everything since possible.

The camera never left my hands

Long before any of the rest of it, there was the camera. I have spent more than a decade photographing weddings, and I still do. If you are getting married and you want photos that feel like a real day rather than a stiff catalogue, that is still very much my thing over at Feather & Birch wedding photography. Fewer weddings these days, but I care about every single one.

The surprise was where else the camera took me. What started as a side project has grown into a proper part of the business: Feather & Birch school and preschool photography, working with schools right across the Central West, North West and Hunter regions of NSW. Different energy to a wedding, same belief that the photo should actually look like the kid in front of you.

The new chapter: helping people build wealth

Here is the part that surprises people most. After years behind a lens, I have become a mortgage broker.

It is not as much of a left turn as it sounds. I have spent years quietly building a property portfolio of my own, learning the hard way what works and what does not. Friends started asking me how I did it, then friends of friends, and at some point it clicked that this was the work I actually wanted to do. So I joined Flint and went all in.

I focus on property investors, and I have a slightly unusual edge: I am a New Zealand citizen with an Australian credit licence, so the cross-Tasman stuff that ties most people in knots is home turf for me. If you want to see how I think about loans, investing and the long game, that all lives at my mortgage broking site, Matty Teague, Powered by Flint. Come say hello.

And then there is Secret Valley

I will be honest, I did not plan to start a festival. It started as a daydream about getting good people together on beautiful country for a weekend, and it turned into one of the things I am most proud of in my life.

Secret Valley Festival is a culture-first community festival held on Wiradjuri Country. Music, art, food, ceremony, and a few hundred of the best humans you will ever meet, all in one valley. Our first proper run sold out, which still floors me, and the dream now is to grow it into something that puts this part of the world on the map for all the right reasons. If you have ever wanted to escape the noise for a weekend, keep an eye on it.

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So, what now?

Three things I love, all going at once: photography that captures real moments, broking that helps people build something lasting, and a festival that brings a community together on country that means everything to me. A few years ago none of this existed. Funny how that works.

If any of it is for you, the links are all above. Reach out, book a chat, come to the festival, or just follow along. It has been a wild few years, and I have a feeling the best bits are still coming.

Thanks for reading,
Matty

Quick links: Wedding photography · School photography · Mortgage broking · Secret Valley Festival