BRIDGE TO A NEW WORLD
Just a year in to their new life, former Sydneysiders Tess Crellin and Stephen Anderson are enjoying new-found privacy in historic Bellerive and Hobart.
Rewind a couple of years to 2015 and Tess and Stephen were having that rite-of-passage conversation about buying a house together. “Only we couldn’t afford to buy in Sydney, and we didn’t fancy a long commute, so we began to think about other places,” Stephen says. “Tess had been working in Cairns, I’d been working in Adelaide, but we didn’t really want to live in either of those places.”
A 2016 holiday in Hobart put the southern city in the forefront of their minds, and a year later they were here. Tess initially worked her job remotely while Stephen quit his job of 14 years to make the move possible. “We just needed to do something different,” he says.
Stephen found work as the campus lead at The Foundry on Hobart’s waterfront, and Tess now works as a researcher at the University of Tasmania’s Peter Underwood Centre.
“We were really freaked out about the rental crisis,” Tess says. They got lucky, securing the first rental they saw. They plan to buy but for the moment are happy with their Eastern Shore rental. They had not visited Bellerive before they became residents. “We thought we would get somewhere in West Hobart or New Town. You know, we’re from Sydney,” Stephen says. “We didn’t really want to live over the bridge but that first drive here was pretty fun. I kept looking for a reason to rule it out.”
Stephen says it didn’t take long for him to be sold on Bellerive. He realised the drive over
the bridge wasn’t far and having Eastlands shops nearby was convenient. Seeing the cute village of Bellerive and the picturesque view on the waterfront convinced them.
“Look at that view!” he says pointing to the city, with the historic warehouses hugging the waterline and kunanyi/Mt Wellington and its Organ Pipes looming above.
From their front gate, a path winds through a corner cottage garden resplendent in bloom on the sloping block. Inside, the floor plan does not reveal itself immediately. A hallway bisects the original two-bedroom house, with additional rooms added over the years as the owner’s cashflow permitted. The unconventional layout suits the couple, allowing them to indulge different styles in different rooms.
“We lived in an open-plan apartment in Sydney. But it’s nice to be able to have privacy within your home too,” Tess says. “It’s only two bedrooms but with a sunroom, separate living room and dining room, it feels big to us.”
Stephen adds: “It tells you so much about our need for space after living in Sydney.”
To keep costs down and their ecological footprint light, they’ve bought most of the things for their new house off Gumtree.