Escape: Award-winning beachfront build an less than 30 minutes from Byron Bay

When Chris and Deborah Pound bought their beachfront home in the far north of the state on Hastings Point in 1996 for $621,000, it was a 1960s weatherboard shack with a DA for 11 apartments.

But the Pounds weren’t interested in redeveloping the site in line with the medium-density zoning. “We wanted to replace a single dwelling with a single dwelling,” says Chris, with the idea being to make the 1644-square-metre property their permanent retirement home.

So rather than rebuild, in 2005 a DA was lodged for major alterations and additions to a design by architect Scott Carpenter.

The result was a four-bedroom residence set over two levels with an outdoor shower, plunge pool and spa that was completed in 2006 and the following year won a Royal Australian Institute of Architects award.

The contemporary residence is also one of the few free-standing houses on the beachfront, with most of the neighbouring beachfront lots dedicated to low-rise apartments, villas or townhouses.

While the two-storey residence with impressive rock retaining walls and 38-metre beach frontage is a far more contemporary home now, Chris says the charm of Hastings Point is that “this forgotten little gem remains much as it was in the 1960s”.

Indeed there are fewer than 400 dwellings in Hastings Point, although it is less than half an hour north of Byron Bay, and south of Tweed Heads.

Sotheby‘s Dominique Vasers Williams says it is hard to value such a unique house, but it is expected to sell somewhere north of $4.5 million when it goes to auction on October 3.

SOLD - $4,450,000

2 Peninsula Street, Hastings Point NSW 2489

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