Designed for Two Families, Yet Perfect for One
Way Way House is set on 3.35 hectares, with expansive northerly views overlooking Gumbaynggir country, to the ocean at Scotts Head and up the coast to Nambucca Heads.
Inland, Picketts Hill adjacent to Valla Beach is a local landmark and north to the Nunn Gaali Mountain (Old Man Sleeping Mountain) comes into view, which is the mountain range that runs behind the Never Never region of Bellingen. To the north-west lie the foothills of the Great Dividing Range and the Bellinger Valley.
Designed by award-winning architect, Luigi Rosselli, Way Way is a four-bedroom house with separate studio.
It can be a holiday house, a permanent residence, or a writing and creative retreat. The house works well in all seasons, with doors and windows flung open in summer as well as warm and cosy during winter.
Incorporating many characteristic features, the long, low house cleverly manages to expand and contract, depending on the number of occupants and their needs at the time. It's a house that's the perfect place to entertain your friends and family as well as providing space for solitude and relaxation.
The story of the Way Way House starts around 20 years ago with three friends who surfed and had dreams of building a holiday house together. They spent two years searching along the New South Wales coast before finally discovering this ideal valley.
The house was designed to be a place in which they could spend time together but, equally, have their own areas. The spaces work perfectly, as per the brief - the communal areas, the breezeway and the separate bedrooms. There are also areas to retreat, such as the mezzanine, studio and for the majority of the year, the pool.
The architects solution was to divide the main house into two pavilions - the quiet bedroom wing and the more sociable living space - separated by a breezeway. From the driveway side, the pavilions are anchored into the land in true Rosselli style. From the ocean side, the elongated house seems to hover above the hillside.
The oversized breezeway is key to the design in a number of ways. The driveway, through the bush, gives you few clues to where you are or where you are going. Once you step out of your car, you see the studio - a simple structure with workspace and mezzanine bedroom - across a triangular lawn shaded by two magnificent Poincianas.
Walk along a short pathway, past a frangipani, across a little bridge and onto the breezeway. With its framed view of the bush and ocean, "you've arrived".
The owners love it for its ability to be both social and solitary - a genuine indoor-outdoor space, somewhere to have a barbecue or to lounge around and read; somewhere to catch the nor'easter or to sleep out at night and feel as if you're camping.
Broad eaves protect the room from the harshest summer sun, and yet allow sun in during the winter. Heating is only needed on the coldest of evenings.
A chef designed the kitchen, with its concrete benchtops. The large island bench provides plenty of workspace as well as a spot to gather. The mezzanine level, directly above, delineates the kitchen area, making it feel slightly separate from, but still within, the living area.
The mezzanine level, part of the living area and yet feeling separate from it, is a flexible space - sometimes an intimate sitting room, at other times a kids' bunkroom or playroom.
The bedroom pavilion is simple in form. Two sets of two bedrooms, with bathrooms between, line up off a long corridor and all take advantage of the views. "When the fog rolls in, you feel as if you're sleeping in the clouds."
As the house has been mainly used for holidays, practicality and ease of maintenance are paramount with its steel frame construction, corrugated iron exterior walls, metal window frames and termite-resistant plywood floors.
An array of photovoltaic cells on the roof provide electricity generation and solar panels provide hot water. There is an existing inverter and, once batteries are installed, there's the option of going completely off grid.
There are three large water tanks. The main one feeding the house goes through an initial water filter and there are additional filters for the kitchen water.
The pool and pond sit in front of the house, down two terraces along a short grassy path. Large and classically kidney shaped, the saltwater pool is 2.3m-deep at one end and falling to ankle depth at the other. There are shallow "beaches" at both ends to sit and relax.
The large deck that surrounds it is perfect for lounging and sunbathing. Looking up to the house above the massive dry-stone wall, the sky disappears into the trees.
The garden, which is threaded with dry-stone walls built by local artisans, is low maintenance and yet abundant with two dams for irrigation. Landscaping is primarily with native species and fruit trees.
One third of the property is cleared. The bushland is a lovely area to walk through, planted with a number of rare natives as well as fruit trees, including persimmons, jackfruit, apples, grapefruit, mulberries, lemons, finger limes and mangoes.
This is further evidenced by a programme one of the current owners put in place to plant over 4,000 trees locally to encourage the endangered glossy black-cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus lathami).
With 20 mating pairs today the current owners can be proud to have enhanced a vacant block with good architecture and good land management.
They can be assured that the house has a good future with regular visitors such as glossy black-cockatoos, sea hawks, wattlebirds, swamp pheasants, catbirds, tawny frogmouths and a whole host of other birdlife
You and your family and friends will enjoy the custodianship of the land bringing new creativity to the experience of Way Way House. However, the spectacular view and its spectacular sunsets at the end of a day will remain.
In many ways the house is a climatic and birdlife observation deck. North easterlies in summer cool the house and in winter the southerlies blow over the top as the house is protected.
In winter the mist from the ocean travels across the coastal plain in the evening and then seeps out to sea at sunrise that's a spectacular event, different every time. Northerly storms and lightning at sea can be observed unfolding and so too large birds of prey like white bellied sea-eagles and Brahminy kites floating on air currents.
A secret location, an easy 4 1/2 hours drive north of Sydney with the recently completed expressway.
Please phone Peter on 0413 111 621 or Brett on 0448 679 697 to arrange your private viewing.
Way Way House is set on 3.35 hectares, with expansive northerly views overlooking Gumbaynggir country, to the ocean at Scotts Head and up the coast to Nambucca Heads.
Inland, Picketts Hill adjacent to Valla Beach is a local landmark and north to the Nunn Gaali Mountain (Old Man Sleeping Mountain) comes into view, which is the mountain range that runs behind the Never Never region of Bellingen. To the north-west lie the foothills of the Great Dividing Range and the Bellinger Valley....
Read more
