INSIDE VICTORIAN COUPLE’S DESIGNER RETIREMENT RETREAT
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INSIDE VICTORIAN COUPLE’S DESIGNER RETIREMENT RETREAT

From faulty family villa to modern beach house.

By J.S Marcus
Thu, Feb 25, 2021 3:04amGrey Clock 4 min

Australian retirees William and Catherine Parsons have settled down in a frontline beach house on the country’s south coast, about a 90-minute drive from Melbourne.

They took the long way home.

Retirees Catherine and William Parsons demolished their previous family home before completing their new beach house in 2019.

Leon Schoots for The Wall Street Journal

Back in 1995, Mr. Parsons, now a 71-year-old retired airline pilot, and his wife, 57, a retired nurse, spent $258,000 on a 1/7th-acre lot on a windy bluff on the, leading to the Port of Melbourne.

Their original plan was to raise their two daughters in a new 371sqm villa, completed in 1998, but faulty construction, they said, culminated in the home’s demolition in 2016. That fiasco paved the way for a $2.1 million do-over with new architects and new builders.

For several years the family endured makeshift living arrangements, including homeschooling their children, now adults, during extended overland trips on four continents, or “road schooling,” as Ms Parsons likes to call it.

Finally, in the autumn of 2019, the couple moved into a new 353sqm, four-bedroom home.

A dark-hue kitchen offers a respite from sunny days on Australia’s southern coast.

Leon Schoots for The Wall Street Journal

The three-story house has a concrete-and-eucalyptus facade sealed against potentially heavy winds and corrosive salt spray. The second floor has a sheltered terrace and pool area accessible from the split-level open living and dining area that highlights ocean views.

The couple make the most of the site, says Mr Parsons, with the help of poured-concrete walls and double-glaze windows. “We’re extremely exposed,” he says, “but the new house is rock solid. With the doors and windows closed, we can just hear the ocean. When they’re open, it’s like a train going past.”

Known for ideal surfing and hang-gliding conditions, the couple’s stretch of peninsula is a dunescape. They went for a wild look with $71,000 in landscaping, opting for low-maintenance indigenous species and a naturally planted roof garden.

The couple worked with Auhaus Architecture, a Melbourne studio specialising in upscale single-family homes. Kate Fitzpatrick, an Auhaus principal, estimates it costs an extra $160,000 to $200,000 to build on their site rather than on a sheltered inland lot. Benjamin Stibbard, her fellow Auhaus principal, says that the peninsula’s predominant southern winds, blowing most days off the ocean, can cause “rain that is horizontal,” adding that the house is “as waterproof as a bathtub.”

The peninsula can also have hot sunny spells in January and February, with temperatures well over 100 degrees. The couple spent $412,000 on concrete, and their double-thick walls help keep the house cool in summer and warm in winter.

The main section of the house includes a top-floor master suite and lower-level granny flat, while an adjoining single-storey wing, separated from the rest of the house by the $79,000 pool area and reached by a first-floor corridor, has bedrooms for their visiting daughters, as well as a music room and a yoga deck.

The shower in the master bath has a skylight.

Leon Schoots for The Wall Street Journal

To navigate the main portion of the house, the couple spent $52,000 on an elevator—an upgrade, jokes Ms Parsons, of the previous home’s dumbwaiter. But their major splurge, they say, was a spiral staircase.

“I have always had a thing for staircases,” says Ms Parsons of the $87,000 set of stairs, which has a looming sculptural presence when viewed from the pool and terrace.

The interior of the home tends to rely on dark elements, including eucalyptus panelling, but the staircase itself is painted gleaming white—at her architects’ suggestion, says Ms Parsons.

She might have opted for the original battered-silver of the unpainted steel, she says, but the white, she decided, “looks elegant.” On the whole, it “takes away the brutality” of the bare concrete walls that show traces of the wood forms used to shape them on site.

The kitchen has a hushed quality due to blue-green Japanese tiles, which give the back wall a dark iridescence. Left over from the master bathroom, one of four in the home, the single-glaze tiles were a last-minute substitute for a continuation of the veined white marble used for a countertop.

“The sun can be glaring in summer,” says Ms Parsons, “but there is something so lovely and soothing about looking at the kitchen—it’s like looking into a rock pool.”

One of two bedrooms reserved for the couple’s adult daughters.

Leon Schoots for The Wall Street Journal

The kitchen cost nearly $111,000, with $46,000 spent on a suite of American appliances from Wolf and Sub-Zero.

The staircase led to a second splurge: the placement of an antique piano that Mr Parsons inherited from his grandparents. Too big for the winding stairs, it was moved into the children’s wing with a crane while the house was still under construction.

“It was our first piece of furniture,” says Mr Parsons of the 19th-century upright, made in Dresden, Germany. Mr Parsons plays mainly classical music, while his daughters when visiting from college, may join in on the flute, guitar or ukulele. The plentiful concrete boosts the acoustics.

Settled into their new home at last, the couple have an easier time visiting nearby fellow retirees: Mr Parsons’ parents. “My father is 102 and my mother is 100,” he says, “and they’re still going strong.”

The exposed lot provides rousing ocean views but also exposes the home to harsh conditions.

Leon Schoots for The Wall Street Journal



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Leaders in Australia’s property industry are calling on the RBA to hit the pause button on further interest rate rises following yesterday’s announcement to raise the cash rate to 4.1 percent.

CEO of the REINSW, Tim McKibbin, said it was time to let the 12 interest rate rises since May last year take effect.

“The REINSW would like to see the RBA hit pause and allow the 12 rate rises to date work their way through the economy. Property prices have rebounded because of supply and demand. I think that will continue with the rate rise,” said Mr McKibbin.  

The Real Estate Institute of Australia  today released its Housing Affordability Report for the March 2023 quarter which showed that in NSW, the proportion of family income required to meet the average loan repayments has risen to 55 percent, up from 44.5 percent a year ago.

Chief economist at Ray White, Nerida Conisbee, said while this latest increase would probably not push Australia into a recession, it had major implications for the housing market and the needs of ordinary Australians.

“As more countries head into recession, at this point, it does look like the RBA’s “narrow path” will get us through while taming inflation,” she said. 

“In the meantime however, it is creating a headache for renters, buyers and new housing supply that is going to take many years to resolve. 

“And every interest rate rise is extending that pain.”

In a speech to guests at Morgan Stanley’s Australia Summit released today, Governor Philip Lowe addressed the RBA board’s ‘narrow path’ approach, navigating continued economic growth while pushing inflation from its current level of 6.8 percent down to a more acceptable level of 2 to 3 percent.

“It is still possible to navigate this path and our ambition is to do so,” Mr Lowe said. “But it is a narrow path and likely to be a bumpy one, with risks on both sides.”

However, he said the alternative is persistent high inflation, which would do the national economy more damage in the longer term.

“If inflation stays high for too long, it will become ingrained in people’s expectations and high inflation will then be self-perpetuating,” he said. “As the historical experiences shows, the inevitable result of this would be even higher interest rates and, at some point, a larger increase in unemployment to get rid of the ingrained inflation. 

“The Board’s priority is to do what it can to avoid this.”

While acknowledging that another rate rise would adversely affect many households, Mr Lowe said it was unavoidable if inflation was to be tamed.

“It is certainly true that if the Board had not lifted interest rates as it has done, some households would have avoided, for a short period, the financial pressures that come with higher mortgage rates,” he said. 

“But this short-term gain would have been at a much higher medium-term cost. If we had not tightened monetary policy, the cost of living would be higher for longer. This would hurt all Australians and the functioning of our economy and would ultimately require even higher interest rates to bring inflation back down. 

“So, as difficult as it is, the rise in interest rates is necessary to bring inflation back to target in a reasonable timeframe.”

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Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’

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