SCHOOL ZONES:
Wainui Beach School, Ilminster Intermediate, Campion College, Gisborne Boys’ High School, Gisborne Girls’ High School, Lytton High School.
There have been days, admits Tanya Mitcalfe, when she's had to force herself to leave her home and drive to work. Not because she doesn't enjoy her job, but because it's been hard to tear herself away from her beautiful house right on Gisborne's stunning Wainui beach.
"It's just a wonderful place to be," she says of the Richard Priest-designed home, that she and her former partner Gordon Halley built 16 years ago. "Sometimes I would really have to steel myself to leave it. You couldn't get a better location - you are so close to the sea that sometimes it feels as if you are in a boat."
For keen surfer Gordon, being just a few steps from one of the country's best surfing beaches has been bliss.
"The advantage of being here is that you can look out the window and see what the sea is doing," he says. "When the tides are right you can just pick up your board and a minute later you're in the water."
Visitors are always mesmerised by the outlook from the house, and one of the nice things about living so close to the beach is that people on it "are doing fun things, and they're always happy," says Tanya.
She and Gordon bought the generous beachside section in 1987 from doctor and ex-All Black Lawrie Knight, even though they were living in Tokomaru Bay at the time.
It wasn't until 2000, a couple of years after they'd shifted to Gisborne to be closer to schools for their daughters Rita, Bess, Georgia and Matilda, that work began on a house to go on the land.
They gave award-winning Priest a fairly straightforward brief. "We just wanted something that made the most of the location," says Gordon.
The house certainly does that. It has plenty of big windows to frame the outlook and is as close to the sand as possible rather than "sitting at the back of the site like it's crouching in fear."
Image 1 of 6: Any closer to the sand and you'd get wet feet. Photos / supplied
From the outside, it looks like many of the baches in the neighbourhood, thanks in part to its exterior of shadow-clad ply. But the interior is a very different story.
"It's fairly unassuming from outside, but inside it is quite imposing," says Tanya.
That's largely thanks to the impressive gently curved and sloping ceilings, made of Australian hoop pine. "My sister calls it the surf cathedral," says Tanya. "It has amazing acoustics."
The line of the striking ceilings brings to mind a wave, a sail or perhaps a sand dune, points out Gordon. "It was a little bit of a challenge for us and the roofing suppliers but it all worked out in the end," he says.
A lot of effort also went into the warm wooden floors. The eucalypts saligna timber was milled from trees owned by a friend on the East Coast, and then dried and machined in Rotorua.
Laid out in the shape of the letter "I", the house is approached via wooden walkways that pass subtropical landscaping designed to be low maintenance.
There are four bedrooms, including a master with en suite, and a family bathroom. One of the bedrooms can be used as a second living room. Decking that wraps around the house forms a sheltered courtyard on the northern side.
As well as being a great family home, it has also been the ideal venue for social occasions and events like songwriting workshops.
The open-plan living/dining/kitchen area makes the most of the beach outlook. The kitchen is sleek and stylish, with a central island and plenty of cupboards and drawers, and the living space includes a woodburning fire.
Another bonus of the house is not visible - it is three underground 22,000-litre water tanks, so water supply is never a problem.
"We needed that with four daughters," says Gordon.
It's just a six-minute drive from the property into central Gisborne and there's a cycleway which is great for kids riding their bikes to school. "It really is a very special place to live," says Tanya.
