Our story — Meet Lihua
I spent eleven years as a materials researcher at the University of Adelaide, mostly studying timber durability and surface treatments for outdoor applications. It was quiet, specific work. I published papers that maybe forty people read. In 2019 I took a sabbatical and moved up to Byron Bay with my partner, partly because he'd found work there, partly because I needed to stop staring at the same lab walls. I brought two boxes of research notes and a folding table. I did not expect to start a business. I expected to walk on the beach and think about what to do next.
Before Stirling Goods existed, I spent about eight months consulting for a joinery supplier in Bangalow, helping them spec timber treatments for outdoor furniture that could actually handle the coastal humidity up here. That work taught me something I hadn't fully understood from the research side: most outdoor homewares sold in Australia are built to a price point, not to a climate. The hardware is wrong for salt air. The finishes fail within two seasons. Watching that happen in real time, with real products people had spent real money on, bothered me in a way I couldn't ignore.
The actual decision point was March 2021. A friend showed me a deck chair she'd bought online for $340. It had already started to split at the mortise joints after one summer, and the canvas had shrunk away from the clamps. I pulled it apart on my back patio, photographed every joint and fitting, and wrote a twelve-page document on what had failed and why. I sent it to nobody. But writing it made me realise I knew exactly how to do this better, and I probably had to. I registered the company in April 2021 and started sourcing eucalyptus from a mill near Grafton by June.
We operate out of a workshop space in Byron Bay and handle all product development and quality checking from here. Every supplier relationship took months to build, and I still visit the main ones in person at least twice a year. The range is small on purpose. I would rather sell thirty products I can fully account for than three hundred I can't. If something doesn't hold up the way I expect it to, it comes off the site. That has happened twice so far, and both times it was the right call.
— Make it last, or don't make it. — Lihua, Lihua Ma
Journal
Finding the right timber took longer than expected
I spent most of last summer chasing down a sustainable acacia source that actually made sense for the Harbour Side Deck Chair.
Before Stirling Goods existed as anything other than a folder on my desktop, I spent eleven years as a materials researcher at the University of Adelaide. That background is probably why I cannot just buy timber from the first supplier who answers the phone. When we were developing the Harbour Side Deck Chair, I needed acacia that was dense enough to handle coastal UV exposure without warping through a Byron Bay summer, which runs hotter and wetter than most people outside the region expect. The search took about four months longer than I had budgeted for, and my partner will confirm it was not a quiet four months.
I eventually found what I was looking for through a small mill operating out of the NSW Northern Tablelands, up near Tenterfield. They work with plantation acacia that is felled on a 15-year rotation, which is shorter than old-growth harvesting cycles and produces a tighter, harder grain. The owner, a bloke named Warren, sent me cross-sections and moisture content readings without me having to ask twice. That is not always how these conversations go. I drove up in July 2023 and spent a day going through the drying shed with him, checking boards for checking, which is the cracking that happens when timber dries unevenly and which looks fine until it does not.
The moisture content we settled on is 10 to 12 percent before the boards are machined. Below 10 and the timber becomes brittle at the joints under load. Above 12 and you get movement after assembly, especially in the mortise and tenon sections of the chair frame. Warren now sends me a data sheet with each batch, and I have kept every one of them in a binder. My wife thinks this is excessive. I think it is the minimum reasonable record-keeping for a product people are going to sit in for the next decade.
The chair itself took three prototype rounds before the back angle felt right. Deck chairs have a long history of being slightly uncomfortable in ways that are hard to articulate, and I wanted to avoid that. I went back to some ergonomics papers I had read during my postdoc, which is the kind of sentence that sounds strange coming from someone who now runs a small goods business out of Byron Bay. But the research was useful. The final back angle is 108 degrees from the seat plane, which sounds precise because it is.
Warren and I are now 18 months into a working relationship that I expect will continue for a long time. He is selective about who he sells to, which suited me fine. I am equally selective about what goes into the chair, so we get along. The Tenterfield mill is not the cheapest option I found. It is, however, the one I can explain clearly when someone asks where the timber came from, and that matters to me more than the margin difference.
How to actually set up the Ember Glow for a long burn
Most people underload the firebox on the first use, then wonder why the fire dies down after forty minutes.
It is mid-July and the Byron hinterland evenings are cold enough now that the Ember Glow has been out on our deck every weekend for the past six weeks. I get a steady stream of messages from people who have just received theirs asking why the fire is not holding. The answer is almost always the same: not enough fuel, loaded in the wrong order. I have been meaning to write this up for a while, so here it is, as plainly as I can put it.
Start with dry hardwood. In this region, ironbark and spotted gum are both widely available and both burn long and hot. Avoid pine for anything other than kindling because it spits and leaves a resin residue on the steel bowl that is annoying to clean. The firebox on the Ember Glow holds a 40-centimetre log comfortably, which is a standard cut length from most firewood suppliers around the Northern Rivers. Begin with a base layer of two or three pieces laid parallel, gaps between them. Air circulation at the base is the thing most people skip.
On top of that base layer, build a small kindling structure, dry twigs or split offcuts, no thicker than your thumb. Light from the bottom, not the top. This is counterintuitive for people used to campfires, but the Ember Glow's bowl shape is designed to reflect heat upward and inward, so a bottom-lit fire establishes a coal bed faster. Once the kindling is well alight, which takes about 8 minutes in calm conditions, add your first main log across the top. Do not smother the kindling by loading too early.
The fire pit has a 3-millimetre Corten steel bowl, which is heavier than most comparable units on the market. That weight is deliberate. Corten holds heat rather than radiating it all immediately, which means the bowl itself becomes a heat source once it is warmed through. You will notice this around the 25-minute mark, when the radiant warmth from the steel starts supplementing the flame. That is when you can settle in and stop fussing with it. Add one log at a time after that, roughly every 45 to 60 minutes depending on the wood density.
One thing worth mentioning: the Corten will develop a rust-orange patina over time. This is not a defect. Corten steel is specifically engineered to form a stable oxide layer that protects the metal beneath it. The patina deepens after the first few months of outdoor exposure and then largely stabilises. I get occasional messages from people worried their fire pit is rusting. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Leave it outside. That is what it is for.
The Avalon lantern started as a problem I kept ignoring
For two years I kept buying solar lanterns that looked fine in photos and were disappointing by the third use.
I have a habit of tolerating bad products for too long before deciding to do something about them. The Avalon Solar Lantern came out of exactly that pattern. We have a covered outdoor area at the back of the house where we eat dinner most evenings from October through April. I went through four different solar lanterns over about two years. Each one had the same set of problems: the solar panel was undersized for the Australian sun angle, the battery capacity dropped noticeably after one humid summer, and the light output was warm in the marketing photos but cool and slightly blue in actual use.
I started keeping notes on what I wanted instead, which is a very researcher thing to do and which my family found mildly tedious. The key requirements were: a panel that could charge the battery to 80 percent capacity in four hours of direct sun, which is achievable in Byron Bay for roughly nine months of the year; a colour temperature between 2700 and 3000 Kelvin, which is the range that reads as genuinely warm rather than clinical; and a battery that retained at least 80 percent of its original capacity after 500 charge cycles.
Getting the colour temperature right took the most iteration. I worked with a product development contact in Guangdong who had previously supplied components to a lighting company I had consulted for during my research years. We went through six LED configurations before landing on the one in the current Avalon. The diffuser material also matters here. Frosted borosilicate glass scatters the light more evenly than polycarbonate and does not yellow with UV exposure over time. It costs more and adds weight, but the difference in light quality is not subtle.
The housing is powder-coated aluminium, which handles coastal salt air better than most plastics and better than raw steel. The design went through three physical prototypes. The first one looked good but the hanging loop was too small to fit over a standard pergola hook. The second had a waterproofing issue around the panel seal. The third was correct in all the ways that mattered, and that is the one we went to production with in August 2024. The process from first notes to production took 22 months.
I use two Avalons on our back pergola most nights now. They run for about seven hours on a full charge, which covers dinner and whatever happens after. I still keep the notes from the early design stages in a folder on my desk. Old academic habit. But looking back at the original problem list and then looking at the lanterns outside, it is satisfying in a quiet way. Most of the work that goes into a product is invisible by the time anyone sees it.
How a slow April morning changed what I was building
I took the Sundaze blanket down to Belongil Beach on a Thursday morning in April and ended up sitting there for three hours.
I am not someone who takes unscheduled time off easily. That probably comes from years of academic life where the work is never technically finished and the boundaries between work and not-work are mostly fictional. When we moved from Adelaide to Byron Bay in 2021, people kept telling me I would slow down. I mostly did not, because the business was just starting and slowing down felt like a risk I could not afford. Last April was the first time in about two years that I accidentally did nothing for a whole morning, and it happened because I took a blanket to the beach.
The Sundaze Picnic Blanket was in late development at the time. I had a production sample that I wanted to test in real conditions, specifically the kind of damp, sandy morning that is common at Belongil in early autumn. The beach faces northeast and gets a long, low light in the morning that is genuinely beautiful, though I am aware that sounds like something from a tourism brochure. I sat down to check the blanket's sand-release behaviour, which is a real and important consideration, and I ended up just sitting there. The water was flat. There were maybe six other people on the whole stretch of beach.
The blanket performed well, for the record. The outer face is a tightly woven recycled polyester that releases dry sand quickly when shaken and does not hold moisture the way cotton does. The backing is a waterproof TPU laminate that blocked the morning damp from the sand beneath. I had been worried the laminate might feel stiff in cooler temperatures, which is a known issue with some TPU formulations, but it remained flexible down to the 14 degrees Celsius we had that morning. I noted all of this. Then I put my notebook away.
I think the three hours I spent at Belongil that morning were the first time I had actually used one of our products the way a customer uses it, meaning without an agenda beyond just being somewhere. It changed something small but real about how I think about what Stirling Goods is for. The research background means I am always testing, always measuring. That is useful. But it is also possible to be so focused on whether a product works that you forget to notice what it is like to be with it.
The Sundaze went into production six weeks after that morning. I made one small change based on the session: we widened the carry strap by 15 millimetres so it sits comfortably on a shoulder when the blanket is rolled. A small thing. The kind of thing you only notice when you are actually walking to the beach rather than reading a spec sheet. I go back to Belongil most Thursday mornings now, when I can manage it. I take the blanket.
Customer reviews
Priya M. — Newtown, NSW — 2025-03-14 — 5/5
Solid hammock, easy to set up
Ordered the Coastal Breeze Hammock on a Tuesday and it showed up Thursday, which I wasn't expecting. The straps are thick and the fabric doesn't sag in a way that feels cheap. We've had it up in the backyard for six weeks now and it's held up fine through some solid rain.
Tom B. — Fitzroy, VIC — 2025-01-22 — 4/5
Great fire pit, minor packaging issue
The Ember Glow Fire Pit is well built and looks exactly like the photos. One of the legs had a small scuff from the packaging, nothing structural, but worth mentioning. Emailed the team and they responded the next morning with a partial credit. Good experience overall.
Sarah K. — Cottesloe, WA — 2024-11-08 — 5/5
Picnic blanket does exactly what it should
Bought the Sundaze Picnic Blanket for a long weekend away. It's a good size for two adults, the underside kept the damp grass off us, and it folded back up without any fuss. Washed it once on cold and it came out fine.
James O. — New Farm, QLD — 2024-09-30 — 4/5
Deck chair is comfortable, delivery was slow
The Harbour Side Deck Chair is genuinely comfortable and the frame feels solid. Standard shipping to Brisbane took seven business days, which is on the longer end. The chair itself is worth it — I'd just go express next time.
Mel R. — Brunswick, VIC — 2025-02-05 — 5/5
Solar lantern works better than expected
I bought the Avalon Solar Lantern for our balcony without high expectations, but it's been running every night for about three months now on a single charge each day. The light output is warm and bright enough to actually see by. Really happy with it.
Daniel W. — Fremantle, WA — 2024-12-19 — 5/5
Good gift, arrived well packed
Ordered the Sundaze Picnic Blanket as a Christmas gift with the gift wrap option. It arrived in about four days to Perth and looked tidy enough to hand straight over. The recipient loved it, and I liked that I didn't have to do any wrapping myself.
Chloe F. — St Kilda, VIC — 2025-04-02 — 4/5
Fire pit is a keeper
We've used the Ember Glow Fire Pit five or six times now and it's become a regular Friday night thing. Assembly was straightforward and took about fifteen minutes. Knocked off one star because the instructions could be clearer on the bowl placement, but it's a minor gripe.
Raj S. — West End, QLD — 2024-10-15 — 5/5
Hammock held up in humid weather
Wasn't sure how the Coastal Breeze Hammock would handle Brisbane summers but it's been fine — no mould, no stretching, no complaints. The colour hasn't faded noticeably either. Delivery was quick and the packaging was better than I expected for something this size.
Shipping
We ship Australia-wide using Australia Post for standard delivery and StarTrack for express. Standard orders typically arrive in 3–8 business days — metro areas like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane are usually at the shorter end, while regional WA, NT, and Tasmania can take closer to 8 business days. Express orders placed before 2pm AEST Monday to Friday are dispatched the same day and generally arrive within 1–3 business days to most metro addresses. We'll send you a tracking number by email as soon as your order leaves our Byron Bay workshop, so you can follow it along the way.
Standard shipping is free on all orders over $100. Below that, we charge a flat $9.95 for standard or $14.95 for express. All prices on our site include GST — there are no surprise charges at checkout. We pack orders carefully using recycled cardboard and paper fill where possible. Larger items like the Harbour Side Deck Chair, Ember Glow Fire Pit, and Coastal Breeze Hammock are boxed and reinforced to reduce the chance of damage in transit. If you're ordering multiple items, they'll be grouped into one shipment where practical.
If your order arrives damaged, please don't throw out the packaging. Take a clear photo of the damage and the box it came in, then email us at hello@stirlinggoods.com.au with your order number within 48 hours of delivery. We'll arrange a replacement or refund as quickly as we can. Occasionally, Australia Post or StarTrack tracking may show a delay or a failed delivery attempt — if your parcel seems stuck, contact us and we'll follow it up on your behalf. We want the process to be as straightforward as possible.
Returns
If you're not happy with your purchase, you can return it within 30 days of the delivery date, provided the item is unused, in its original condition, and sent back in its original packaging with proof of purchase. To start a return, email hello@stirlinggoods.com.au with your order number and a brief description of the reason. We'll confirm your return within one business day and provide the return address. For change-of-mind returns, the cost of return shipping is the customer's responsibility. Once we receive and inspect the item, we'll process your refund within 5–7 business days.
Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law apply to all purchases from Stirling Goods. If a product is faulty, not fit for purpose, or doesn't match its description, you're entitled to a remedy — which may be a repair, replacement, or full refund depending on the nature of the problem. In these cases, we'll cover the cost of return shipping. Please contact us as soon as you notice a fault so we can resolve it promptly. We take these obligations seriously and won't ask you to jump through unnecessary hoops to access your legal rights.
A few things we're not able to accept back: items that have been used, assembled, washed, or are missing their original packaging. Sale or discounted items are also final sale unless they arrive faulty or not as described. If you received a gift from Stirling Goods and need to return it, reach out with the order number (usually on the packing slip) and we'll work through the options with you. Refunds are issued to the original payment method. If you paid by card, your bank may take a few additional days to process the credit on their end.