'You wake up to birdsong': An off-the-grid dwelling in the heart of Prom Country

Among the towering trees of Fish Creek sits a small, off-the-grid holiday home that eschews the cliches of a traditional beachside escape.

Designed and installed by sustainable module architecture company, Archiblox, the three-bedroom dwelling of Simone Kelly and her husband David was created to sit within nature and not outside it.

“We love the land so much,” Kelly says. “We aren’t the kind of people who were always thinking that we needed to have a holiday place to go to, it was just that we love the land and the wildlife. Fish Creek has a very high wildlife rating with incredible birdlife, kangaroos and wombats. We didn’t want anything that was too imposing; we wanted something that just sat with the landscape.”

Having no desire to impact on the land or wildlife while having their holiday escape built, the couple enlisted the help of Archiblox to have the home constructed off-site.

“Our first major reason [to build off-site] was because it was a country area, and getting something built remotely is hard, so prefab is a great way to go. You generally save a bit of money, and it’s more convenient than trying to get trades there,” she says.

And so their home was built and orientated on the block to capture the sunrise of a morning and the moon’s light at night. The home is separated into two modules; one for sleeping and one for living. A wrap-around deck offers the couple expansive views across the Prom and unspoiled insight into the wildlife with which they share the space.

“There are three bedrooms in the back module, a bathroom, a separate toilet and out the back there’s a deck and outdoor bath.

“It’s so peaceful; we can’t hear anything, no cars at all. You wake up in the morning to birdsong.”

Kelly says the couple now structure their weekends around being able to visit the home.

“We go every second weekend; our whole weekend has to fit around that. It’s really important to us. There are so many beaches around, we are 10 minutes to the door of Wilson’s Prom, 10 minutes to Sandy Point and 10 minutes to Waratah Bay.

“We often just open a map of Wilson’s Prom and are constantly pinpointing and discovering new beaches. Most of the time when we get there, there’s no one else there. I can’t recommend the area enough.

“We didn’t want to leave one suburban house just to go to another one. We wanted to have a genuine escape where everything is different, the different lifestyle there is so important to us.”

Inspired by permaculture, the couple use the property to learn more about how to live off the land and minimise their carbon footprint. The garden is intended to be almost entirely self-sufficient, with David growing as much as he can and Kelly cooking it.

It is, Kelly says, a “big part of [their] lifestyle”, saying the natural environment is far and above their favourite part of the escape.

“All of the unspoiled nature is our favourite part, like the beaches and the wildlife. There is an enormous mob of kangaroos that stop by at dawn and dusk every single day.

“We had as many sliding doors designed as possible, so that we can feel as among everything as possible, and so we can really open the house up.”

For the couple, it’s less of a home and more of a lifestyle.

“It’s a genuine retreat for us with genuine downtime. The quality of rest there is very different to the time out we take at home.”

“It’s really taught us to slow down, and taught us how much better the quality of your rest is when you do turn everything off.”

Simone Kelly is the author of a cookbook inspired by her gardening and harvesting adventures, titled Family Harvest.