It’s a universally acknowledged truth that childhood summers last forever, and a more heartbreaking reality that, as we age, summers start to come and go in seconds. As an ode to the never-ending summers of their youth, Clodagh Crowe (art director at Gardening Australia Junior) and her husband Nick refurbished a seventies beach house in the area she spent her holidays as a child – and they’re renting it out so you can tap into the magic too.
Named after the retro ice blocks that – along with childhood summers – one day began to vanish, Sunny Buoy is a retro haven in a sleepy beach town buried deep in the Murramarang National Park. And while the location alone – minutes from the beach, on a quiet road surrounded by gum trees – could take this three-bedroom house to the top of any family’s NSW holiday hit list, it’s the house itself that makes a stay here special.
As a designer for ABC Kids, Crowe has spent years creating settings that inspire a sense of play – spaces that speak to the child within us all. And at Sunny Buoy, she’s done exactly that: it’s a house that will hold you in holiday mode, and immediately re-set you to a state of easeful play.
“It’s not quite a time machine, more of a coastal mid century filter,” Crowe explains.
From the outside, you’ll notice a seventies shell, and a colourful wave of paint that curls around the garage. Through the front door, you’ll be struck instantly by the aesthetic: a step back in time into a fiasco of vintage finds. The first floor is an overt ode to the Sunny Buoy ethos: a sprawling rumpus room with a colourful corner sofa laden with mismatched vintage cushions, and a ping pong room with a full-sized table and walls lined with vintage tennis racquets. Entering on this floor, you’re immediately invited to play – it’s impossible to go about the business of unpacking, or any other serious holiday activities – without first smashing out a few rounds of ping pong, and exploring the groaning bookcases for a holiday read.
Sunny Buoy is the kind of house that calls at your curiosity – every shift of the sunlight will allow you to discover a new corner to explore. Along with the vintage artwork, the colourful ceramics that fill the cupboards and line the walls are all op shop finds that Clodagh and Nick have discovered over the years. “Nick has a knack of unearthing pretty fab ceramics at op shops – we are kind of competitive about it. The big fish platters on the walls gained me some points,” Clodagh explains.
Spread across three floors, the house is at once expansive and intimate: open plan, but with enough cosy corners to hide away with a book until you decide it’s time to join the game of Finska unfolding in the garden.
We arrived late on a Wednesday night – having left Sydney after work on the day before a public holiday – and fell into deep, post-journey sleeps after the obligatory arrival ping-pong match.
The first morning unfolded at a dreamlike pace – we drank tea and journalled, bathed in the morning light that pours through the windows, filtered to tangerine through the stripy orange curtains. Leaving the house was slow and unessential, but we managed it to explore the nearby beaches. We returned to the house for lunch, and after an hour or so of reading in the sun, we walked back to the coastline and picked a path along the rocky outcrop to the very south of South Durras beach, curling up to a dramatic headland. We walked through the National Park to Emily Miller Beach – an entirely deserted bay looking out onto sparkling ocean. We walked back home through the late afternoon sun, past kangaroos grazing lazily between the trees. That night – after one final swim at the beach by the house, as the setting sun turned the sky to powder pink – we lit the fire and fell asleep before the embers.
We woke earlier on that second morning, and after coffee in the sunshine, headed for North Durras beach – a long stretch of sand and sparkly, slightly sharky water a short drive through the National Park.
We spent the rest of the day working, filling the table on the deck with laptops and taking a mid-morning break for pancakes in the sunshine. If, on a summer's day in the early 2000s, I’d dared to dream what it might be like to be an adult, this is what my fantasy would look like – through the eternally optimistic lens of a child oh holiday.
The sunshine on the day we left was weak and warm – gentle with the last echoes of summer. The gum trees cast their slow-moving shadows across the street, and the only thing that made sense in that moment was to chase the light down to the beach – a barefoot race across slowly-cooling sand to catch the last rays of the day. But we’re adults now, and summer holidays no longer last forever, so we packed up the car and left our slice of the seventies behind. You can learn more and book your stay at Sunny Buoy over here.
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