And so it was at Kurreki, a holiday house we spent a few days in during October, to mark a milestone birthday and generally just to get away from it all. As soon as I set foot on the sun-bleached timbers of Kurreki’s deck, the relaxing began. And didn’t stop until the day we drove away.
The house is owned by Newcastle-based architects Shane Blue and Rachael Bourne, of bourne+blue, and it is simplicity in its purest form. The bedrooms and living areas all face inwards to a central, open deck and gardens and can be opened up to create one big space that suits children and adults alike. Shane and Rachael apparently designed the house to calm their then young children’s fears about what lurked in the outside bush.
The list of things to love about Kurreki is long. There is the location: Seal Rocks; the feather-filled daybeds on two walls of the living room, complete with copious amounts of cushion; the combustion fire; the easy-clean everything; but I think my favourite thing was the bathroom. It consisted of one stall-like toilet, a stainless steel sink with fibreboard bench and the best shower I have ever had. The floor was the deck, with several holes drilled for drainage, the shower head was big and metal and old-fashioned in style and substance. The soap holder was a large rock. The only barrier between the occupant of the shower and the great outdoors was a brightly coloured and very flimsy shower curtain.
I balked at having a shower on our first evening at Kurreki. It was a bit gusty, going by the movement of the curtain. So I waited until morning, and then the whole corner was bathed in sunlight and the experience bordered on religious. I could even hang my towel on the rudimentary rails along one side of the house and they were baked warm and dry before lunch.
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