WHANGAMATA
517 BEACH RD
Jean McKenzie was not remotely impressed with Whangamata on her first visit there 52 years ago. She had no idea where her husband was taking her and the winding metal road was not conducive to keeping a two-year-old and a three-year-old happy.
But she and her husband Max came to love the place so they bought a section and camped there whenever they could.
Jean recalls the conditions were fairly primitive — they didn’t have a flushing toilet, she had to wash nappies in a kerosene tin and the outdoor shower was only usable at night when nobody could see them.
Eventually, though, they built themselves a small cottage, and later bought another piece of land in the area and built a new house.
Then they found a little concrete block house on a piece of land right beside the harbour and Jean knew that was the place she wanted to be.
“I like lots of peace, and the harbour is peaceful because you don’t have the sound of the waves.”
They bought the house and asked Te Awamutu architect Tim Gisler to draw up an extensive renovation.
“I told him I wanted something different, and this is what he came up with,” Jean says.
The curved roofline and the sea blue colour scheme were certainly different when the house was built 25 years ago, and so was the design. The 209sq m, twostorey home is fully self-contained on both levels with a total of five bedrooms, three bathrooms and two living areas.
Jean did the interior design herself, choosing colours from the environment.
“I’m interested in colour and I’ve studied it through floristry over the years,” she says. “I looked at the sea and chose my colours from there.”
The ground floor level is blue and the second level mint. Jean’s furnishings also reflect the different colours she saw in the water and shoreline, and everything is geared around the views of the Whangamata Harbour.
There are decks for both levels, and the backyard is the ideal beachfront section — more than 800sq m of flat lawn for tents, cars and boats, and room for cricket and badminton. There’s a separate high stud lockable boatshed.
“My late husband was keen on jet boating and was involved in racing but we just had a family boat at Whangamata,” Jean says. “We water-skiied on every high tide so that was sometimes twice a day, and we taught heaps of kids to ski.”
The family spent every summer at the house until Max died in 2000, but Jean is pleased that he was involved in the project and saw the house virtually completed. The rest of the family didn’t go to the beach that summer, but did resume their harbourside holidays and the children and grandchildren continued to enjoy the attractions of the area.
Whangamata is known for its safe swimming beach and for a great surf break, and Jean is going to miss the location, the views and the proximity to the harbour.
She now lives beside the water in Taupo so she still has water views, and says the time is right to hand the beachhouse on.
“We’re not using it enough and I’d love to see another family having the fun we had there,” she says. “But I will miss the tradition of spending holidays there, playing golf, lying in bed at night watching the launches go by, and the smell of the sea.” Size: Land 832sq m, house 209sq m. Price guide: CV $1.35 million. Auction: November 16. Inspect: Today 10am11am. Schools: Whangamata Area School, Opoutere School. Contact: Sheree Henderson, Bayleys, 027 662 9558. On the web: bayleys.co.nz/ 2200209