I'm John Wardle architect and part owner with my wife Susan of Waterview
Property on North Bruny Island in Southern Tasmania.
The Shearers Quarters was the first of the two major building projects and one really only
considered after we'd spent about 10 years of looking after the property. Over that period of
time we planted nearly 10,000 trees. Our family, friends and staff created the sanctuaries; the
private forest reserves and spent a lot of time then also just rejuvenating the farming values.
We produce fine wool merino sheep, we've got about two and a half thousand sheep.
We really looked after stewardship of the land before we even contemplated building anything.
In wish to translate the story of this as being an inhabited shed
I thought the obvious thing was to clothe it in corrugated iron.
It's a complete wrap of roof and walls. Other than the windows the corrugated iron is only broken
in one place and that's the entire skinned end of the building which is the bunk room.
Now that's a bit of a play on Shearers Quarters generally that there's a certain status in a
sharing team from the shearers to the wool class to the cooks to the rouse-abouts and
the rouse-abouts are the lower order and they generally had the lesser accommodation often
out on the veranda and so the vast timber louvers that fill the whole of that elevation really are a
humorous reference to the status of the rouse-abouts and the bunk room,
it was very often at the periphery of these buildings.
From its Southern side it appears like a large skillion structure set into the
landscape and you could presume that it is more the rudimentary shed or the secondary structure
on a farm. On the North side you see that it's something completely other it translates
to a gable as it faces Kelly's Cottage and its sequence of gables which is the main homestead.
Then once you enter the interior you see it's completely sheathed in timber.
Macrocarpa is the tree of choice for wind breaks right through Tasmania and much of
Southern Australia. So many farmers have a shed full of cut up macrocarpa
and I by putting ads in the paper source this macrocapa from about
nine different places. You'll see that it is the primary timber throughout for both the joinery
and the walls and ceilings, other than the floor which is a more durable eucalypt. When
we go into each of the bedrooms the cross walls, the single cross walls in each of the bedrooms is
apple box timber. Each of the rooms is a testament to a different apple orchard and
marks the identity of the structures that transported the apples to Europe in those days.
I'm a mad collector of things and the various sheds on the farm are full of these things.
In the design of the Shearers Quarters there was something about it that I found
didn't really cater for the placement of lots of things, there's no paintings on the walls
there's just the one area of the bookshelf and one single plank-like piece of joinery that
runs the entire length of the living room that contains objects but apart from that
I think there's just something about the spirit of that place that doesn't need much adornment,
so as a house it's relatively paired back and unadorned.
I think for me the Shearers Quarters is a testament to our understanding and appreciation of
many aspects of the site, the region and it does tell the story of its making and
it was really in the creation of this structure that through a very good builder, Scott Caldwell,
we discovered the many skills that are evident in Southern Tasmania. Remarkable carpentry,
incredible window joinery, the steel fabrication is really of a very high order and as the job went
on the ambition built and what started off as a rather simple and singular interior did become
more involved with my fascination with the process of making and a greater knowledge that then was
occurring during the course of construction of people that could make things beautifully.
Waterview is a story that probably in our mind doesn't have an ending to it where it's
a place of continued involvement. What started as planting trees in the middle of a Tasmanian winter
to then the idea of building things together to a more sophisticated program of learning
from others. For our practice this has become an important cultural learning.
Spanning pretty much the entire length of the six kilometres of ocean frontage there's a series of
rather eccentric objects from stone projects to bridges to an outdoor bath house, the pottery
kiln, flag pole. Staff come down either one or two occasions during a year and build these projects.
They've become a very profound sense of self for our practice.
It makes me feel very appreciative that we've got the property
it's been the setting of just so many great moments of our life.
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