Green floors and pink walls: This seaside home is not your standard beach shack

Down a long dirt road on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, sisters Emma Read and Sarah Hall found the old-fashioned fishing shack they’d been dreaming of. 

Built right on the sand in Chinaman Wells – a tiny settlement of original shacks west of Maitland – the elevated 1950s beach house was still in original condition. It would make the perfect canvas for Read and Hall to create a unique space filled with light and colour.

The sisters, who both live with their families in the small town of Willunga, had already honed their property makeover skills on an earlier project, the popular Marion Bay holiday rental My Sister and the Sea. They left behind their careers – Read was a social worker and Hall a lawyer – to partner on creative projects, from overhauling interiors to selling vintage furniture. 

Approaching this second big project in 2019, Hall says “we didn’t really have a budget but it had to be kind of low”. They bought the shack for $330,000 but Read jokes they might have been tempted to pay a king’s ransom after seeing the shack for the first time in the golden light of early evening.  

“Once you’ve seen it at sunset you just sign on the dotted line,” she says, laughing. “The sun sets right in front of it so it just glows. The whole thing lights up on the inside.” 

They had their work cut out for them, however. The shack was boarded up after being left alone for quite some time and “was just kind of sad”, Hall remembers. 

The “cabin-ish” layout consisting of two bedrooms off the one main living room inspired them. With the relative isolation of Chinaman Wells, where “all the people that holiday there have done for 40 or 50 years”, Read says, they immediately saw the potential to “be really comfortable and happy there, and cocooned, just by yourself”. 

The sisters went deep with their creative process. One of the first things they did was invent an imaginary character who might live in the shack to guide their choices. What kind of linen would she want to sleep in? Which records would she listen to while drinking a cocktail by the fire?

“Making these accommodation spaces is our fun time, that’s what we love doing,” Hall says. 

That said, nothing could be rushed – the sisters started work on the shack at the beginning of the pandemic. Looking back, they say the delays were beneficial, giving them time to get to know the space and tune in to their intuition. “You’ve kind of got to listen to the house and let it be what it is,” Read says.

The bold, playful colours they chose for the interior deviate from the standard beach shack aesthetic: there are green floors in the living area and an electric-blue wall in the bathroom, plus plenty of pink inside and out. Extra touches include a gold crushed-velvet curtain, floral linen and timeless red-and-white stripes for the cushions and hammocks.

Read and Hall profess a love for the patina and character of old sinks and salvaged materials. They integrated second-hand pieces where possible while upgrading the bathroom and kitchen. The wood of the kitchen benchtops was sourced from an old bowling alley. 

Among the pink bathroom tiles are vintage porthole windows found at a salvage yard, installed to catch the moonlight “because the moonrise there is incredible”, Read says. The sunrises are epic too, so they put windows in the kitchen where there’d been none, just to capture that moment in time. “We kind of love the idea of making your coffee in your bare feet and watching the sun rise in the kitchen,” Read says.  

So much of their work amplifies the sky, sea and elements. Hall says, “We wanted it to have a real celestial bohemian quality because there’s so much above you there – all the galaxies. You have this whole uninterrupted night view, it’s all reflected in the water, it’s absolutely amazing.” 

There’s no Wi-Fi or television, but there is an inviting fireplace and a record player, plus a large balcony and beachfront fire pit under the open sky. The sisters named the shack Love and Mutiny and they’ve made it available for guest bookings. 

“It’s for people that understand that you want an adventure,” Read says. “It’s a whole experience, starting when you get in the car to drive there.”