At the Beach

Prise open the average Kiwi heart and at its core will likely be found lustrous and languid memories of seaside holidays, all as burnished and translucent as pearls.

Words by Kate Coughlan  Photographs by Tessa Chrisp

"The green blinds were drawn in the bungalows of the summer colony. Over the verandas, prone on the paddock, flung over the fences, there were exhausted-looking bathing dresses and rough striped towels. Each back window seemed to have a pair of sand-shoes on the sills and some lumps of rock or a bucket or a collection of paua shells."

IT’S NEARLY A HUNDRED YEARS since Katherine Mansfield wrote about that summer’s day At The Bay. Could have been penned yesterday, so fresh and evocative is it of summer and holidays and family. And The Beach House, peering over the Waimarama sandhills at a broad swathe of Hawke’s Bay coast, could be that very house in which Kezia and her sisters languished, hiding from the heat of the day.

That was the idea of it. Its architect, Hawke’s Bay farmer turned designer and builder Andy Coltart, its owner, investment banker Jonathan McHardy and its interior designer, Aucklander Jen Pack, all wanted to create a house that looked as if it had been there forever. Each one in this talented trio talks up the others as the genius behind the house which, seven years on, is passing the test of time with brilliant marks for being a great holiday home for both family and casual renters. 

“I didn’t have any input at all,” says Jonathan, “in fact I should get zero credit for the house.” He works for Credit Suisse and is based in New York but spends about one-third of the year in New Zealand with his four children who live in Auckland. “I was brave enough to give Andy the go-ahead and a free rein, that’s about all.” He is being altogether too modest, says Andy.

It was at a millennium party in the McHardy family beach house – an old-style and needing-some-attention original Waimarama beach cottage – that Andy and Jonathan (cousins of a sort) talked about doing up the beach house.

Andy, who sees what houses might be in ways that the rest of us don’t even dream about, announced that the house ought to be bowled. “But,” he emphasized, “it must be replaced with something that looks exactly the same.” Jonathan agreed – totally. “Board and batten,” shouts Andy as he strides the lumpy lanes of Waimarama settlement, arms whirling like windmills in a nor’-wester, pointing NZ Life & Leisure in the direction of good houses, ones with authenticity, that work in the setting and from which he drew inspiration when designing The Beach House. “It had to be board and batten. It had to look as if it belonged and it had to be a real beach house with that rough-sawn, hewn and crafted feel to it.”

From the lane the house is unremarkable, just the usual jumble of sleep-out and boat-shed-type buildings nestled up to an ordinary board and batten dwelling. From the beach it is yet another time-worn, carefree and long-term inhabitant of the beach-house community. Yet this seven-year-old structure is a three-bedroomed house that comfortably sleeps 16 and can, at not too much of a stretch, take up to 22 in all its vast covered verandahs and sleep-outs.

Print

12next ›last »