AT HOME

Historic Oatlands sandstone cottage embraced with warmth and a touch of whimsy

Rebecca Kissling’s Commandant’s Cottage at Oatlands is a gem of colonial architecture and part of the town’s historic military precinct. It is also one of the oldest buildings in the town. The cottage has been significantly extended and renovated over the years, but its half-metre-thick sandstone walls remain.

Back in the day, the colonial government was committed to establishing a permanent presence at Oatlands. Of course it helps that the town had stone in abundance for the required building works.

If you look closely, you’ll see that some of the town’s buildings are built directly on to sandstone bedrock, and that many are constructed of very large pieces of stone. An even closer look at the Commandant’s Cottage reveals a distinctive pattern, evidence of a particular builder who left his mark on several buildings in Oatlands in the 1830s.

It was soldiers who built the first two rooms in 1828, and by 1836 the cottage included convict-built sandstone servants’ quarters and stables. It was described in a gazette from the time as being “furnished in a superior style”, and possessed one of the finest cedar mantelpieces in Tasmania. Later additions in the 1910s and ’20s included a veranda, porch and sunroom.

The oldest rooms are now the sewing rooms of Rebecca, a succesful felt artist, and a place where the distinctive aroma of lanolin pervades the air. It’s here that Rebecca creates wearable felt art including jackets and scarfs, whole-fleece wool throws, as well as felted artworks of Tasmanian marsupials such as quolls, devils and even a Tasmanian tiger to sell at Salamanca markets. The rooms are filled with multi-hued rare-breed sheep’s fleeces in various stages of production.

“Felting is all natural and organic, and no sheep are harmed. A single sheep can yield up to 15 fleeces in its lifetime,” she says.

Having grown up in West Hobart, Rebecca, like so many Tasmanians, moved away in search of work and opportunity, settling in Melbourne where she worked as a landscape gardener and started a family. She returned to Hobart a decade ago to pursue her passion for textiles, initially opening a shop in Battery Point before relocating to Oatlands three years ago.

“Oatlands has always been my favourite country town,” Rebecca says. “I had to get used to spending more time alone, but I’ve made peace with that and now I love it.”

Her home has plenty to keep her busy, though she’s in no rush to renovate. Beyond her studio, the lounge room is filled with Edwardian-era tub chairs draped in her own plush felted fleeces, which provide warmth to the dimly lit room. Antique bowls full of artefacts uncovered in the garden – chipped crockery and glass, pegs, nails and so on – are a fascinating reminder of the house’s history.

“I’m keeping them all together because they belong to the house. And I’ll leave them behind for the next owners,” she says. “I’ve also got the original plans and some old photographs, which I’ll frame for the hallway. I want the next owners to know its history, too.”

A glass case of curios – featuring a white peacock’s feathers, snake skins, rare rocks and shells, coins, teeth, handmade nails and so much more – completes the scene.

The lounge, however, wasn’t always a lounge. “Because I took the front rooms for a studio, I had to really think about how I would use the rest of the house,” Rebecca says. “Previous occupants used this room as a dining room, but it’s a lounge room for me. The fire pumps out a lot of heat, but look, no mantelpiece. Local hearsay has it that the commandant thought it a bit too grand, so it was removed to the courthouse. I’m looking forward to following that one up.”

The dim lighting is a better fit for a lounge than a dining room, and so renovations aren’t necessary to introduce light to the space.

“My ethos is that you need to live in a place for a few years before you change things,” Rebecca explains.

A new kitchen that sits lightly in its surrounds is the biggest intervention Rebecca has made so far. “Kitchens, as we know them, didn’t exist in the 1820s,” she says.

To overcome this she opted for a contemporary kitchen that can be easily removed, leaving the sandstone heritage untouched. She’s also retained the kitchen’s unusual double entry as well as a convenient indoor firewood room. “This is a favourite room in the house. I don’t need to keep a big woodpile outside, and better yet I don’t need to go outside in winter” she laughs.