Watch the dolphins play
Jon Wilcox is a patient man, driving up every fortnight from his home in Auckland to water the tropical forest of plants in the stunning atrium of his Tutukaka holiday home.
He also gives himself time to enjoy the outlook from his three-storey house cut into the cliffs above Dolphin Bay.
“The outlook is the best thing,” says Jon. “The sea is different every day, I can see the dolphins. The major thing here is the rocks all-around, which are perfect for snorkelling and where there are crayfish; you see people diving for crayfish.
“There are nearby tracks down to the beach. My friends want me to keep this place, but it’s too far for my kids to come, they want something closer, and this place needs people to live in it.”
Jon gives all the credit for the house, wrapped around a two-storey atrium with walls of glass that slide away between living floor and decks, to the original owner of the property, Alex McConnell.
The retired Waikato farmer had subdivided the land with a neighbour and built the house right on the cliff edge.
Jon found that many parts of the final house differ from original plans, as Alex was hands-on in the build, adding and adapting the spaces as the house went up.
It was Alex who planted the giant palms and tropical gardens that frame the house and insisted on the striking stainless steel eaves (the site sees some whopper storms, Jon says), and who had the pebble entrance archways and solid steel courtyard staircase fabricated.
An alley of tall palms beside a thatched roof gazebo merge the house with the driveway.
The layout of the huge house makes it perfect for extended family stays.
From the tropical entrance court, people enter the vast open-plan living space off the two-storey atrium.
A generous island of Brazilian stone, with a feature mural of ferns and bush, is the centrepiece of the kitchen.
Sliding frosted-glass panels hide acres of storage and bifold windows open out as a servery to the deck. The deck on this level includes a spa pool, perfect for evening soaks to take in the pohutukawa trees and sea views.
There is a guest bedroom with en suite on this level that Alex uses to save going up the stairs, as well as an office that could become a further bedroom. Also on this floor is a generous utility room, which has a bricklined wine cellar added into a spare space, as well as a carport for overflow vehicles.
But it is the upper-floor master bedroom that really gets the tropical resort treatment.
“The whole feeling is very Balinese, South East Asian, we call this the Saigon room,” says Jon.
Like the ‘honeymoon suite’ on the ground floor, Alex had the two upper-floor bathooms as open-plan spaces with the bedrooms, to share those stunning ocean views, with the toilets in separate rooms. As well as the bedroom suite, the lower ground floor has the triplecar garage, and tucked into the hillside, a media room.
Jon had planned to re-line this room, for further sound-proofing to make it a rumpus room.
But with kids having other plans, he’s decided the home needs more full-time residents.
Tutukaka and the older town of Ngunguru which is
10 minutes further drive away and has benefited from an influx of visitors, making the two-and-a-half hour drive north from Auckland for some of the best diving and fishing around the Poor Knights Islands, as well as the biggest marina.
Jon enjoys seeing the incredible boats, and there's a good selection of restaurants if the fishing doesn’t work out.
He hopes he can snaffle a cray or two before the house sells and the next owners get to own this slice of Northland paradise.