I'm John Wardle architect and part owner with my wife Susan in Waterview the historic property
at the Northern end of the North of Bruny Island in Southern Tasmania. There are two structures,
Captain Kelly's Cottage and the Shearers Quarters, that sit
on the edge of this vast maritime landscape overlooking the ocean of Storm Bay.
We bought the property after a very quick and rather cursory
single visit. Knowing nothing about the history of the place,
we did some very quick research found out about the history of European settlement or colonial
settlement that started with Captain James Kelly, a first generation European Australian
from two convict parents. Kelly being this maritime adventurer built this small
rather Irish looking cottage right on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean to the world beyond.
A place of amazing ruptured oceans and waves that crash high onto the cliffs and up over the
landscape. When we bought it I hadn't realised the house was as old as it was it had been
added to over so many years it sort of lost the sense of its own history.
Slowly by asking neighbours, previous owners, putting ads in the local papers for remnants
of history, old photographs, invited people who had stories to tell, we appreciated its
really important archaeological and architectural history. You'll see it in this
relationship between the contemporary reading somehow recording episodes of its own past.
A rather curious form of curatorial restoration work where the paint has been removed to reveal
the original paint colours around the staircase, through the hall and into the bedrooms.
Bits of cornice and ceiling and wall and architrave and skirting slices
through the old paint work, somehow tells a story of both the original proposition
of the house but also the subsequent eras of existence that have been set from here on in.
The thesis is it was built by Kelly's ships carpenters. It looks like it was done by
several hands with different techniques in evidence.
The houses that exist today is actually smaller than it was
when we purchased it. We reverted back much closer to its original footprint.
People on yachts and boats and fishermen have known this little house there
for many lifetimes. I really enjoy that aspect of its identity.
As a testament to those ships carpenters, we've had many nights with raging storms over Storm Bay.
High winds and driving rains and the house does not even creek. So it's a great place to be at
that time and you really feel the weather there really it is you feel very much on the edge.
The house really the primary elevations facing the ocean but we arrive at it through the rear
entry which is a large hat and coat and boot room. Coming to be welcomed inside.
Within that principle structure of the four primary rooms of the house which would have
been one stage three bedrooms and a teeny living room. I did move
away from the flat ceiling that was there we re-engineered the ceiling with a pitched roof.
An old door hatch into the old roofscape is now a window with a rope pull shutter that draws
morning light into the kitchen. Maybe it comes from appreciation of technology I like
things that operate or move and this house contains a series of those.
The large wall that is on the side of the entry actually becomes a door and slides back
when we're using the courtyard. The windows on the veranda seating slide back and retract, shutters
open up things sort of unfold and the house as a consequence takes on a series of different
characteristics and different settings can be created with this degree of operability.
These primary elements of timber and brick are totally locally sourced; a massive
pack of Tasmanian oak directly from a sawmill made everything all of the new walls, floors,
ceilings, windows and joinery. But then as you look into the house you'll see fabrics from the
Burrell Textile Company in Portugal tiles, from INAX from Tokonami in central Japan, curtains from
a young fashion designer in India that we met. So it has this aspect of Kelly's own life being
locally set but like the house itself built on the edge of a cliff looking out to the world beyond.
There's something about Kelly's story that allows us to consider that this is a place where we can
assemble lots of objects and it's a house full of things. Generally on sort of themes of ocean and
agriculture and treasures found from the ocean floor beneath the property to archaeological
digs on the property itself to things that we've assembled from trips around the world,
I can virtually name every Sunday market from many other places around the world and this collection
of things that has somehow been assembled in a relatively undisciplined fashion in this house.
There's little doubt that this was for such a small and condensed project,
one of a high degree of difficulty. Restoring an ancient structure, giving it contemporary reading
on a cliff edge on an island off Tasmania is not an easy
process. I did feel particularly pleased with the responsibility we took.
So I do feel the responsibility of ownership. It's only now more recently that the harder reach
into the pre-colonial histories of First Nations stewardship of the property has been undertaken.
It's a more difficult history to research but it's something that we're intent on doing now.
But we feel very honoured to have a place that has
such importance throughout so many histories that then
come together to inform our use of the property and the stewardship that we now have over it.
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