On our cover: A modest Wairarapa bach gets an up-specced resize.

Once new and now reworked, this Wairarapa bach is even more perfect

Early Wairarapa settler Charles Bidwill was made of stern stuff. The ancestor of Wellington artist Diana Bidwill, he arrived in the Wairarapa with a flock of merinos to establish one of the earliest sheep stations in the country. His home was two tōtara bark huts on the banks of the Ruamāhanga River, one for sleeping and one for cooking. During the great Wairarapa earthquake of 1855, Charles was caught in the Hutt Valley at a friend’s house, which fell down around their ears. The next day he walked all the way back to his South Wairarapa home on the virtually destroyed road that crossed the Remutaka Range, jumping the chasms and clambering through the landslides as the earth continued to shake.

When Diana and her husband, designer Grenville Main, decided to look for a weekend bolthole in Charles’ old stomping ground, their introduction was a lot more gentle, though almost as spartan.

They had originally planned on finding a small and charming Martinborough cottage. However, what they ended up with was a 40ha block of farmland in the Ruakokoputuna Valley, with a river running through it.

“It was a spectacular piece of countryside,” says Grenville. “You drove around the corner and saw this beautiful river zigzagging through the valley, with the limestone cliffs and native bush… You really are in the middle of nowhere.”

While their first few years were spent pitching a tent or

camping out in a horse truck, the couple’s intention was always to build. They knew what they wanted, something “small, modern and really minimal” that delivered maximum “space, light and openness”.

Eventually, they settled on a Bachkit: a modular kitset designed around free-standing rooms or pavilions linked by an open breezeway. “Basically, you build a roof and a floor and put the internal walls where you want them,” says Grenville. When privacy and shelter are needed the spaces can be closed off, but on a scorching Wairarapa summer’s day, “you can literally open up the whole house”.

Glorious as the bach’s isolation was, it did present the occasional dilemma. Such as when Grenville was there alone and broke his ankle. “Luckily it was the left foot.” He hobbled into the car and drove up the road to get cell phone coverage – and then figured that he might just as well drive back into Wellington. There was, he says, no point in shouting because “no one’s ever going to hear you… I always loved the idea of not having a phone and being off the grid but it’s not actually very practical.”

Given the ankle incident, you can understand why, in 2018, when the couple realised that they wanted to spend more time in the Wairarapa, they decided to add a few creature comforts. Broadband, for instance, so that they could each work remotely (not to mention, watch Netflix) and a swimming pool.

River swimming, while wonderful, can be a bit of a lottery. The river tends to dry up during the frequent Wairarapa droughts but if there is too much rain, it becomes swollen and full of debris. Plus, the water is usually freezing.

“Putting a pool in started the ball rolling,” Grenville says. “If we were doing that, we decided we might as well pimp the back of the house. We’d been drawing on the backs of envelopes for years so we had a pretty good idea of where everything would go.”

Now, their modest bach (featured in NZ House & Garden in 2010) has gone from two bedrooms and two bathrooms to, well, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Friends and family thought they were completely mad not to add more bedrooms but, with the new kitchen, decks and pool, “we’ve basically doubled the size of the house”.

“The kitchen is great now – it was very constrained in the older house. The bench is so big you can have a quite a few people all making things together,” says Diana. She says that the clerestory windows above the kitchen and dining area are her favourite element of the changes to the bach as they make the whole area seen huge, light and airy.

Aside from artworks by Diana and others, the bach is furnished with pieces from the couple’s many trips to India, a country they find fascinating for its colour, chaos and charisma.

The sensible thing would have been to put the pool out front. But Diana and Grenville wanted to preserve their uninterrupted views down to the limestone cliffs and river below. So they excavated into the bank at the back instead.

“We had something like 120 truckloads of dirt taken away,” says Grenville. Now, with new views to the north and south, “the house feels connected to the native bush in ways we never really anticipated. Birds and the river are pretty much all you hear.”

Bach life is good in winter too. “It’s actually delightful. You

just light the fire and hunker down with Netflix or read books.” Then there’s their “mad gaggle of dogs” to walk: Martha, the Staffordshire bull terrier, and Albert and Agatha, the French bulldogs. “You wrap up warmly, traipse across the paddocks and get completely saturated.”

And in the evenings, you can simply sit round a campfire, “trying not to freeze”, and look up at the stars. “We’ve always marvelled at how amazing the sky is at night.” In fact, says Grenville, “people from Auckland have been known to stand outside, saying ‘Bloody hell, look at that!’”

As for the 40ha that surrounds the bach, horse-lover Diana has two competition horses and rides dressage so is developing the land around the house to breed competition-quality New Zealand warmbloods.

‘Birds and the river are pretty much all you hear’

THESE PAGES (from left) When privacy and shelter from the wind are needed, Diana Bidwill and Grenville Main close the glass sliders and aluminium louvres between the living room, breezeway and spare bedroom; above the bed is one of Diana’s works from her series of military horse paintings, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Officer of the Hussars, while a series of Indian masks hang on the living room walls. Grenville in front of the new kitchen bench; the kitchen cabinetry is white oak and made by Prestige Joinery in Masterton; an old camel saddle from India is perched on top.

THIS PAGE Bowls are stacked on an old yoghurt churn from India, used as a coffee table; the sofa cushions are also from India as are the masks on the back wall and an elaborately carved Indian chest (far left), with an antique wooden bull’s head on it; the large artwork is The Street Down the Road from My Barber by Robert Withers. OPPOSITE (from left) The macabre and colourful painting is of Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci who were shot then hanged by Italian partisans – Diana studied with the artist, Roberto Paulet, a Romanian who has lived and worked in New Zealand and created a series of works on dictators on their deathbeds. Looking towards one of the extended decks – beyond, the limestone cliff drops 20m to the river; the white chair is a replica Eames and the old rugs are from Diana’s grandmother’s house.

THESE PAGES The wire ballerina on the right, made by Diana, marks the back wall of the old bach; the new space has retained its mid-century feel and includes pendant light shades made from 70-year-old Japanese bamboo paper once stocked in a shop called Stocktons owned by Diana’s father in the 1950s and 1960s which specialised in items such as Danish teak furniture and Rorstrand porcelain.

THIS PAGE (from left) Diana’s studies of horses look down on a teak ice bucket imported by her father and a fish sculpture by Paul Dibble on an old refectory table. A seal skull sits inside an antique Chinese footbath on a coffee table from ECC; the painting is by Simon McIntyre and the ply drum is a handy place to stash togs and towels.

THIS PAGE (from left) One of Diana’s oil paintings hangs in the master bedroom which is open to the living room; despite it having no door, being tucked around a corner makes the room “completely private” says Grenville; cast bronze hands make an appealing picture holder on the bedside table. Looking towards the new decks and the bush above the limestone ravine where the river runs.

THESE PAGES The new kitchen, living, dining and poolside areas have essentially doubled the size of the bach; long, leisurely lunches for extended family and friends take place under the k¯anuka trees with the new spaces making it easier to entertain, says Diana.

THIS PAGE (from left) The new clerestory windows rise above the open-plan kitchen and living area. Shutters close off the breezeway from the living room and bedroom while the skylight is open to the elements: “There was a perspex cover you could buy for it but we never got round to it,” says Grenville.