Sunday Examiner (22-July-2009)
Labour of love a dream come true
A West Australian couple feels right at home in WestburyLana Best reports
It was the century-old conifers around the Westbury Village Green that drew West Australian couple Diana and Gil Stokes off the old Bass Highway as they headed to a friends’ place at Golden Valley.
For weeks they had been wandering Eastern Tasmania looking for a big block of land to build their dream home. The locations were spectacular, the people friendly and helpful, but they were giving up hope of finding their ideal site.
“We had a 50-acre bush block in mind, and it was a real adventure hunting around,” Gil said. “But nothing seemed quite right, or it was too remote for us. “We had nearly given up really.” While stopping to admire Westbury’s heritage-listed trees, and chatting to an old gentleman picking up what he described as “the best chestnuts in Tasmania” the Stokes saw a dishevelled hedge gate with an old “for sale” sign hanging on it. It introduced a 0.6ha block of vacant land, in a prime position on Lonsdale Promenade.
The paddock had once been part of the neighbouring property of Ardenaglas, residence of the first local magistrate J. P. Jones. The paddock also contained an amazing collection of old English trees, but it had been on the market for a long time and carried with it a relatively hefty price tag. To the Stokes, who were used to Perth prices, it was a steal, and the trees they considered invaluable.
“While we were looking around the sun was setting and the light that fell upon the autumn leaves was just beautiful — we really felt this place was fitting, even though it wasn’t a big bush block” Diana said. Twenty four hours later they owned it.
This all happened in 2001, and now their investment, on the other side of the real estate boom, is worth triple what they paid. More importantly, they are closing in on the day they can move into the dream home that, due to unforeseen circumstances, became a long-term, rather than a short-term plan.
Gil Stokes grew up with the unshakeable desire to be a farmer. Unable to help with a farm, his mother guided Gil into agricultural science and he graduated with a Bachelors degree from Melbourne University in 1963.
For the next two years he motorcycled through Asia, the Middle East and Europe with a fellow graduate, and came to the decision that he would become an academic. Then followed two years at Sydney University and six years in the US at North Carolina State University and UC Davis, completing a Masters degree in Animal Nutrition and a doctorate and post doctoral studies in biochemistry. Over the next 13 years he held academic positions at the University of Western Australia.
He resigned in 1987 from a tenured Senior Lectureship to start a consulting business serving universities, industry and government. Frequent trips with Diana (second marriage for both), were made across Australia and to India, Indonesia and Singapore.
The business services he offered is work he continues in Tasmania. Gil is also an active member of Westbury Working Together, a committee charged with implementing projects identified by the community to make Westbury a better place to live and visit. His knowledge is an asset to the historic town that, like so many others bypassed by highways, is having to reinvent itself.
With this background, it’s easier to understand why Gil returned to WA after buying the block in Westbury with detailed drawings of the new patch of land and started methodically and meticulously planning their new home.
It took a year to wrap up his work in WA and sell the house they were living in. By then Gil had sourced all the jarrah timber for the house, designed and built his own windows. He even spent days coming up with a pattern on computer for the unusual and Asian-inspired ogee (S-shaped) verandah rafters, marking out the pattern with string in his backyard and shaping the timber to suit.
The curve of the verandah, which bullnoses against the house then ends on an upswing. is superb, but no one will ever know the tests, trials, mathematical calculations, tweaking and fiddling that went into getting them right “With us nothing is simple,” laughed Diana. “Right from the start we both had very different ideas about what we wanted, other than a new building with plenty of character. “In the end I let Gil have his way as long as I was able to add the finishing touches.”
Diana was born in Patagonia, Argentina, where her father managed a large sheep station for its wealthy English owner. At age 10 she sailed with her family to Kenya (during the Mau Mau uprising), in order to escape the Peronista regime in Argentina. During her school years Diana attended eight boarding schools as the family moved between farms.
Before leaving WA she worked in beauty therapy, managed a health club and taught healthy diets, gym workouts and yoga. Six years ago she discovered the joys of belly dancing. With a real gift for graceful design and home making with an eclectic collection, she has put her stamp on the main house and its a real eye opener for visitors. Built in Victorian gothic style, the steeply pitched roof, its inviting wraparound verandah, French doors and picturesque setting are perfect for such an historic site.
But the Stokes are yet to live in it. When they first moved to Tasmania the couple built a tiny studio flat to live in and a friend of Diana’s built a granny flat on the block with the aim of sharing in the Stokes’s dream. However; she soon returned to WA and Gil and Diana were forced to buy her flat, and their own plans seemed scuttled. In the end they decided to go ahead and build the main house, but use it as a bed and breakfast until they could afford to move in and rent out the other two buildings instead.
Gil, with no architecture experience, designed the house on his computer using nothing like Archicad, or Punch, or any other drawing programme, but instead the business spreadsheet programme Excel.
When he took his drawings to a Launceston draftswoman and teacher she was amazed. “She said none of her students could have done it better, and told me I didn’t need her, and just indicated the extra information the council would want to see”, Gil said.
This was the first of many cost-saving manoeuvres. Engineers required the footings to be driven well below the clay belt, an expensive and specialist job — unless you hire local fence contractor Ian Brown and his post driving equipment Saving: $5000.
Four container-loads of virtually prefabricated house parts went into the jigsaw puzzle, and even materials they tried to source in Tasmania, such as polyester insulation, they found in Melbourne far cheaper. Savings: another $5000.
However, the building boom had hit by the time construction was underway in 2005, and Gil’s builder, who had agreed to do the work on a low hourly rate as a filler between regular jobs, was rarely around.
When the Stokes took their first accommodation bookings for Agfest in May 2005, it was not even finished. “Gil was still hammering in nails on the verandah as our guests were arriving” Diana recalled.
Visitors have a choice of the Oak Luxury Suite on the ground floor with its amazing huge bathroom; the Walnut Tree View Suite, upstairs, with its grandstand view into the canopy of a stand of magnificent oaks, ash, walnut and cedar trees, the Chestnut Sunrise Suite with its quaint dormer window room overlooking the enormous spreading linden tree or Linden Cottage, the Stokes first little flat, far more conducive to self-contained accommodation with cosy log fire and private verandah.
Neutral backdrop colours, interesting angles with rooms tucked under the roofline arid into the eaves, a mix of Australian, Asian and Indonesian artwork glamorous and shimmering soft furnishings, elegant Victorian antiques and luxury fittings are trademarks throughout
There’s a beautiful country kitchen and breakfast area and a cosy lounge room in front of bay windows for guests to share. Somehow Diana whips up amazing continental breakfasts of fruit juices, organic muesli, berry conserves, King Island yoghurt, freshly baked croissants with homemade local berry jams and Croplines. She has catered for wedding receptions and all kinds of conferences and celebrations, indoors and out, where crisp white linen and country-style decorations leave a lasting impression.
“Other than installing a big spa bath, the home we planned was not modified in any way for the B&B” Gil said. “We hope to be living in it in the next year or two and it will be easy to convert back into a home”
In the meantime, the raspberry patch is producing yummy fruit, an orchard is growing and a large, curved rose garden has been planted to enhance the external landscape. A Californian redwood has been planted and will eventually live up to the towering reputation of the European trees. Elm Wood is fast becoming everything this slightly mad scientist and his beautiful belly dancing wife envisaged.