Vacation VIBES

A SYDNEY FAMILY CHANNELS EAST COAST AMERICA TO CREATE A CHARISMATIC BEACH HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE OCEAN WTH BREATHTAKING VIEWS

- SUE WHEELER

SOUND WAVES Just a pebble’s throw to the sea, this beach house on the South Coast of NSW is the luxury escape of owners Bernadette and Greg and their children, Isabella, Anastasia, Alexander and William. After living overseas, they returned to Sydney in 2006, buying and renovating this holiday home three years ago.

“We always envisioned having a place on the beach that the family could keep forever,” says Bernadette. The exterior (below) embraces classic Hamptons style with pale grey timber cladding in Dulux Dieskau softly contrasting fresh white windows and doors. In the dining room (left), a bowl from Amara Home adorns a timber table, where guests are treated to delicious food and the best view in the house.

The moment she arrives at her family beach house on the South Coast of NSW, Sydneysider Bernadette kicks off her shoes and heads out to the deck to inhale the view: an uninterrupted, panoramic vista of Seven Mile Beach, its shoreline just steps away from the Hamptons-inspired holiday home she shares with husband Greg and their children Isabella, 23, Anastasia, 21, Alexander, 19 and William, 17. “It’s so close you feel like you are on the ocean,” says Bernadette, who stumbled across this once-concrete shack in a coastal community close to her heart and where the children learned to surf. “The cottage hadn’t been touched for 30 years and was set up as two houses,” she recalls, “but it had amazing views of the beach from every room, and it was easy to imagine how gorgeous it could be, both for us and as a holiday rental.”