Living and raising a young family in a large heritage house in the middle of South Australia’s Clare Valley may sound like a romantic fantasy, but for Alice and Andrew Duncan sometimes it feels more like a cold, hard dose of reality.
The Duncans moved into the grand stone homestead at Hughes Park, on a scenic winery drive three kilometres from Watervale in the midwinter of 2013. Even though they’d just completed a significant renovation, they very quickly discovered what it meant to live in a house that had 60 centimetre-thick stone external walls and 50cm internal walls. “It’s like a bunker,” Andrew says. “A storm can rage all night, but you wouldn’t know until you ventured out.”
“And in winter it’s extremely cold,” Alice adds. “We installed heating in…
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Australian Country Homes (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 22