GRANDFATHER DESIGN

When Eilish Kidd brought her husband and children from Indonesia to Hobart, they moved into a house designed by her architect ancestor – and felt right at home

T he sea of tranquil green leaves greeting you through the gate of Eilish Kidd’s Sandy Bay home couldn’t be further away from the bustling streets of Jakarta, Indonesia.

This is a family home with the imprint of past generations of Eilish’s family. The line of shoes at the front door – from tiny to grown-up – speak of the family she and husband Miskad are bringing up inside these dark red-brick walls.

Eilish spent part of her teenage years in this house, sharing the room that now belongs to her 15-year-old daughter Arlene (also in the home are 11-year-old Teddy and keen gardener Chloe, 6).

The house is a sprawling dual-occupancy home designed and built in 1969 by Hobart architect David Hartley Wilson, Eilish’s grandfather. It’s still a family affair: Eilish’s mother lives next door in the adjoining dwelling and her father lives downstairs in a separate apartment.

The home’s exterior isn’t showy. It’s all brick and large windows, a deliberate move to bring the outside in.

“The outside is the drama of the house,” Eilish, 41, tells TasWeekend, as she points out the enormous windows that make artworks of the imposing trees and garden. Each room is minimally decorated, so the foliage outside is always the star.

It wasn’t until Eilish and husband Miskad moved the children into the home four years ago that she realised what a well-designed home it is for a family. “My grandfather was really thoughtful about the way he did everything. It is designed so it functions really well and I’ve only really appreciated this as an adult,” she says.

In her mid-20s, having finished studying art at the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts, Eilish took a trip to Jakarta where her mother was working. Intending to head to Iceland to continue producing art, she met Miskad at a hotel gym and was seduced by the hustle and bustle of life in Jakarta.

They began to raise their family there, with the thought always in the back of their minds about some day returning to Hobart. Working as an editor for The Jakarta Post, it was a heady time for Eilish to be in Indonesia covering news and features – the tsunami, embassy bombings, bird flu and swine flu were all events keeping those at the paper busy.

“The people are amazing, the food is amazing, Jakarta is a huge and vibrant city,” Eilish says. “Yet there’s an underlying stress to living there with the infrastructure. There are cracks in the buildings, and sometimes you’re wondering if the shelf in the supermarket is going to fall down while you’re doing the shopping with the kids.”

Eilish and Miskad made the decision to come back to Hobart eight years ago.

“When we first came back, we couldn’t believe how beautiful it was,” she says.

They were especially taken by the free playgrounds – their cleanliness, their lack of mosquitoes. In Indonesia, access to a clean, safe park would have to be paid for.

“The boat park (at Princes Park) at Battery Point was just like a paradise to us.”

Since partnering with her mother four years ago to buy the dual-occupancy home her grandfather designed, Eilish says the family is only now really starting to enjoy the house.

“We had a lot of time where we’d almost deliberately be out of the house doing things, as that’s what we did in Jakarta. It takes a long time before you ground yourself (after Indonesian living) and spend time in the garden on the weekend.”

Eilish and Miskad have combined their love of art and fitness into Artgym in the Hobart CBD. There, they’re creating a gym unlike any other – full of art and community. They’re also getting behind the burgeoning new sport of kettlebells. Eilish is recently back from the World Kettlebell Championships in South Korea where she competed for Australia in the endurance weightlifting sport, which is all about repetition against the clock rather than maximum lifting power.

Each night, the family returns to the sanctuary designed for them decades ago by a loving grandfather, with raised wallpapers to remind them of the past, and their children’s artwork to remind them of the future they’re building in this tranquil corner of Sandy Bay.