Why I created DNA

GAVIN'S STORY

I am an international chef and massage therapist, shaped by years of working and learning around the world.

I grew up in South Africa, where family was everything. When I left home and began travelling, I lost some of that closeness. I spent years working as an international chef, cooking across different countries and cultures. Those kitchens, ingredients and people shaped how I understand food and hospitality. But so often, I experienced it alone.

As I approached fifty, I was burnt out. Years of travelling and working had taken their toll, and the need to reconnect—with myself as much as with other people—became impossible to ignore. I went to Costa Rica to train in massage therapy and discovered another way of caring for people: through attentive touch, movement and presence. As a massage therapist, I bring that same care and awareness to the body that I have always brought to food. Both practices now form part of DNA alongside land and craft.

I realised the need for connection was not mine alone. There is a shared hunger in all of us—to belong, to be known and to feel part of something real.

“I didn't want to create another retreat. I wanted to create the conditions for connection.”

Nothing forced. No prescribed transformation. Just a simple place where people can come together and do something with their hands—cook, paint, grow, make or learn. While we are occupied, conversation begins. We laugh. We help one another. The guard comes down.

I am also deeply uncomfortable with how chemicals and industrialisation have distanced us from the natural world. I am not fanatical about it. I simply believe we can make more thoughtful choices and live in greater harmony with nature. I want people to rediscover what the earth already gives us—to understand herbs, grow real food and learn how both can nourish and support us from within.

That is where connection returns: not because we are told to connect, but because we are sharing an experience. Organically. The way it should happen.

DNA is my way of creating that place again—rooted in our earth, our food and our culture.

OUR EARTH · OUR FOOD · OUR CULTURE