A small practice, built to hold a few families well.
The Annum is founder-led and deliberately small. It grew from one family’s own relationship with Bali — knowing the island, its schools and its neighbourhoods first-hand — and the conviction that a family year abroad should be lived, not project-managed. A small number of stays, each held to one standard from the first decision to the last.
The Annum did not begin with our discovering Bali. It began with knowing it well. Oscar lived on the island for several years before we had a family, and we have now moved here with our own young children. In making that move, we found that the school, visa, household, healthcare and unwinding of life at home still sat as separate projects. The Annum is the single practice we wanted beside us.
It is not a relocation agency, a villa broker or a concierge app. It is one team that takes the family’s stay as a whole and holds it from the first decision to the last. The standard is the one we keep for our own family: that nothing within our control is left unattended, and that the year, when it comes, is lived rather than managed.
Oscar Rodwell
Oscar leads the structure, the partnerships and the operating systems behind the year — the specialist visa, property, legal, financial and insurance relationships a complex move requires. He grew up in Queenstown, studied property development and finance, and spent two decades in property before scaling a New Zealand luxury apparel and homewares house from retail into full local manufacturing and overseas markets, through to a complete exit in 2024.
He raced on the New Zealand ski team in an earlier life and is still happiest in the mountains — ski touring, climbing, riding and fishing in the Southern Alps. He brings the same instinct for the hard, unseen work to every family’s year: get the difficult things right, quietly, before they are ever felt.
Lydia Rodwell
Lydia leads the creative life of the practice and the experience a family actually feels — the welcome, the rhythm of the year, the care in the smallest detail. She trained in bridal design and moved through event management, luxury retail and retail leadership before spending years as a bespoke wedding and event planner for some of Queenstown’s most established names, looking after discerning clients from around the world.
Together, Oscar and Lydia are raising their two children in Bali. Lydia’s first-hand understanding of family life on the island, alongside her professional experience, informs how a family comes to feel settled. Her eye — for sunshine, travel, the rare and the genuinely beautiful — is the one that decides what The Annum feels like: considered, warm and quietly exceptional.
We arrange for other families the year we once wanted ourselves, and could find no one to hold.
AboutYou meet one face. The work behind them is coordinated as one.
Each family is paired with a Bali-based Family Host — a consistent point of contact who knows the household, carries the practical detail and stays close across the stay. Around the Host sits the wider operating structure of The Annum: the founders, the specialists required for the stay, and the people selected to support the household, school, property, health and immigration work.
The founders set the standard and remain close to the defining moments, but the daily relationship belongs to the Host. The aim is deeply personal service without making the family dependent on one founder being constantly present.
The team around each stay is assembled deliberately. The right Host, household staff, driver and specialist support depend on the family, the children, the location and the year being planned. The standard remains one; the people around it are selected for the family in front of us.
The family is from Queenstown, New Zealand — which will always be home — and now lives in Bali. The Annum is run on the ground here, with New Zealand a constant in the background. It takes a small number of families each year because the standard it keeps cannot be kept at scale. Introductions are welcome, and so are considered direct enquiries.
Where a family is not the right fit, we say so early and kindly.