Recent retirees Arthur and Shirley Robertson travelled the world during the course of their marriage. They set off from their home city of Melbourne with their two young children and lived in the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. In Australia, they resided in Sydney and Brisbane before coming to a stop in Adelaide.
With their children now grown up, and their working lives winding down, the Robertsons sought a fresh start. “Wherever we’ve lived, we always looked for land,” Arthur says. “We dreamed of buying acreage and wanted to build our own house.”
The couple explored the Adelaide Hills, up and down the coast, and the state’s famous winemaking regions before finding a small piece of paradise on the Fleurieu Peninsula. About one hour south of Adelaide,
down a dirt road that leads to a small, isolated beach, they discovered a block of land for sale.
On the north-facing side of a steep slope, it offers incredible views across rolling hills. In the distance, bays and beaches curve around to the right, with Mount Lofty rising above the sweeping Gulf of St Vincent coastline. “When I saw this place, I just knew this was it,” Shirley recalls.
Just as the couple had carried out extensive research to find their magnificent site, their search for an architect was equally meticulous. “Before we even thought about building our own house, we saw the Balhannah House designed by Max Pritchard – which was for sale at the time – and we really liked it,” Shirley says. “But we interviewed other architects as well, before deciding to engage Max.”
The brief they gave Pritchard was informed by their peripatetic lifestyle, particularly their memories of a favourite house they’d occupied on the Solomon Islands. “We lived in a house that overlooked the ocean, and it was oblong-shaped with a massive chef’s kitchen, and a wall of glass that opened on the sea side,” Arthur says.
“We envisaged this as a long house with a flat roof, and a wall of glass,” Shirley says. “We also wanted high ceilings, a big family room and an open fire. To us the bedrooms were secondary, although we wanted enough space for our children and friends to be able to come and stay.”
Pritchard says his design started as a simple linear plan. “We were lucky that the view and the solar orientation were in the same direction, but I wanted to angle the plan towards the view across that adjacent valley, too,” Pritchard says, pointing towards the hills in the east. “The triangular roof point developed from that decision.”
The unusually shaped roof – it resembles a folded pocket square, with its longest side facing the coastline – covers the house, an adjacent carport and elevated