Breakfast With Cherie

A pine tree stood dark and large, a sillhouette against the winter white, bright morning sky. Fog hung in the valley, mist rose, clouds billowed above the distant mountains, the sun glowed brilliantly. We sat in Cherie's kitchen, warmed by the woodstove, and the sun, which streamed through the full length window set in the rammed earth walls. A magic morning.
A week earlier I'd met my friend Cherie walking her dog 'Mocca' while I was searching for mushrooms. She told me she was going to north Queensland that day to spend some time with her parents and sister, and suggested that I pay her a visit when she got back to see the progress on her house. We arranged that I'd call in for coffee around 8.00am the next Sunday on my walk. As it turned out we bumped into each other near the shops and walked to her house together, with 'Mocca' and 'Snowie' setting the pace.
Before breakfast, Cherie took me on a tour of the house, a culmination of her life's passion of two decades or more. Cherie has a consultancy business helping owner builders get started, and to incorporate features like rammed eath, mud brick, solar heating, double glazing, hydronics, and heat exchange. The theme is good design, energy efficiency, and healthy homes.
Her house accordingly, nearly but not quite finished, is a showpiece. Cherie bought the block of land some years ago, primarily for the view, for $150,000. The old cottage provided temporary lodgings while stage one of the building went ahead before it's asbestos sheeting was professionally removed and the building demolished. A massive old pine tree also went, and some scrappy messmates, leaving the way clear for a rock landscape on the lower half of the long narrow block.
Cherie admits frankly the house is over the top. She's spent all of the $600,000 she got for her farm, and then some, including $80,000 on the garden on rocks and steps and plants. The second level has a lap pool, solar or heatbank heated. It's really three appartments in one, with it's own sewage treatment plant for recycling into the garden.
The top appartment has the best view and a balcony, where we stood looking down the street at the other houses. Cherie said, matter of factly, "Gembrook's changing quickly. These houses will all be gone in 10 or 15 years. People will want the view and the current owners will take the dollars. New owners will knock the old houses down, like I did, and build on the high ground to maximize the view. People will see the opportunities for dual occupancy."
I had to admit, although I'm more a cabin with an open fire man, that Cherie's right. Things are changing rapidly.