A Week in Sydney with the SATC Distribution Ready Program

Last week, I travelled to Sydney representing Merilli1885 as part of the South Australian Tourism Commission’s Distribution Ready Program, joining a small and select group of South Australian businesses invited to pitch directly to Tourism Australia and connect with trade partners from the UK, Europe, Asia and North America.

It is one thing to tell your own story. It is another to be trusted to tell it on a national stage, in a room designed to open doors to international markets. That is what the Distribution Ready Program helps make possible, and I am still taking in what it means to have been chosen for it.

Standing alongside me was a remarkable line-up of South Australian tourism businesses. Fellow accommodation operators Mt Little Station, Flinders Island Eco Escape and Stony Rise Lodge, each offering their own version of a slower, place-led stay. Food, wine and beverage names including Château Tanunda, Maxwell Wines and Coopers. Experience and tour operators including Discover Adelaide Tours and SA eBikes, along with Reisen Hotel Hahndorf, Immersive Light and Art, The Lane Vineyard and the Royal Adelaide Golf Club.

The South Australian Tourism Commission hosted and championed the whole group, bringing together businesses with different landscapes, histories and ways of welcoming a guest. Together, the group said something about South Australia that no single business could say alone: depth, quality and a state that knows exactly what it has to offer the world.

For our part, I told the story of Merilli1885: a restored 1885 stone cottage on 90 acres of working Angus cattle country in Currency Creek, on the Fleurieu Peninsula. Exclusive use, one booking at a time. Paddocks, ancient gums, a spring-fed dam, horses that come to the fence for a carrot, heritage stonework and quiet, unhurried days. For an international traveller this is a  unique and fully immersive experience in a genuine Australian landscape, waking to Kookaburra’s and watching Kangaroos boound across the paddocks amongst our cattle and horses.

I spoke about the farm too. About regenerative practices that build soil health and water retention over time, not overnight. About the kind of stewardship that thinks in decades, not seasons. It is a slower story than most pitches allow for, and it was heard exactly as I hoped it would be.

Programs like this matter enormously for a small regional business. They are the difference between having a wonderful place and having a wonderful place that international travellers can actually find, book and reach. The Distribution Ready Program helps close that gap, connecting South Australian operators with the trade relationships that carry a destination’s name into the rest of the world.

My thanks to the South Australian Tourism Commission and Tourism Australia for building this pathway, and for the confidence shown in inviting Merilli1885 to be part of it.

I came home to Currency Creek with new relationships, a clearer sense of where we sit in the international market, and no small amount of pride in the company we now keep.

South Australia has never had trouble producing extraordinary places. What programs like this do is help make sure the world finds them.