Hannah Tribe lives here

After visiting a bushland village for years, Hannah Tribe of Tribe Studio Architects details the thinking behind the weekender she calls home away from home.

Bundeena is an idyllic hamlet in the Royal National Park, south of Sydney. The park is absolutely incredible – mind-blowing geology and biodiversity and cultural significance. We had been taking small breaks there for years, enjoying the bushwalking, beautiful beaches, snorkelling, kayaking – all the hearty goodness and only an hour south of our home in Sydney.

The park is absolutely incredible – mind-blowing geology and biodiversity and cultural significance.

We weren’t really looking for a house when this one came on the market in 2017. It was a quaint little fisher’s cottage, sadly subsiding and tenuously held together by an unfortunate combination of asbestos and termite poo. It’s on a level block facing north, one minute’s walk from both my favourite beaches. My husband Malcolm, who is usually the sensible one in the relationship, made the call to impulse buy.

We designed and built a new home and moved in at the beginning of 2020. We hadn’t intended for it to be a permanent home, but we wound up living there for most of 2020 and part of 2021.

The house has no windows on the street elevation – it’s a windowless backdrop to the amazing, established Queensland bottle tree.

The house is designed on a simple square grid, with a courtyard at the centre. It is simple in construction and unpretentious and easy to live in, modest in scale but generous enough to support friends and family with complex mobility requirements. It is also diminutive in height, recalling the modest cottage that was on the site before. And it is a calm and serene backdrop to a rowdy, barefoot, beachside, bush-adventure kind of life.

The house has no windows on the street elevation – it’s a windowless backdrop to the amazing, established Queensland bottle tree. During construction, we met former resident, Meataxe, a Harley Davidson-riding tree enthusiast who actually planted the tree for his mother 40 years ago. He was very protective of it and palpably relieved that we were protecting and honouring it. We were palpably relieved that he was relieved.

Having no windows to the street, a flat roof and an outdoor shower has been pretty confusing for some people, who mistake the house for a beachside public loo. I take this as a magnificent compliment, given the exceptional calibre of public loos in our national parks.

Designing a house for one’s own family is a bit tricky. Malcolm only wanted a fireplace. The kids didn’t care at all. It’s quite hard to have no brief to interrogate or push up against. In the end, the design is driven by a repetition in the structural set-out and stud work, such that it can all be precut, partially prefabricated and used as a prototype kit home.

The design is driven by a repetition in the structural set-out and stud work.

The planning arrangement is a simple double-loaded corridor plan, where one room has been deleted and replaced with a beautiful green courtyard. We look onto this courtyard from our bedroom, which is my favourite room.

The great surprise and pleasure of this house has been growing a garden. I’m an inner-city person, and my gardening experience has been really limited up until now. When we found the site, it was basically scorched earth and Colorbond fence. We have planted a native garden, all from tiny stock, and now have beautiful eucalypts, banksia, acacia, tea tree, bottlebrush- and grevillea-attracting birds, lizards and possums in the garden. I have also planted a teeny weeny Queensland bottle tree to frame the entry path so that in another 40 years, Meataxe’s mother’s tree will have a companion.

The great surprise and pleasure of this house has been growing a garden.