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Where Vacationing Australian Families Can Rough it in Style

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Somewhere between the outback and the campground is this Seal Rocks beach house designed for family get togethers in NSW.

A huge square metal shell houses a nearly empty interior courtyard.

The house is a narrow shell arrayed around a giant open square space.

Within the skimpy interior spaces there are accommodations for two sets of parents and up to six kids in bunks.

For these two families, the spartan accommodation has a down-under campground feel.

From a child’s eye view of the kitchen – there seems to be plenty of room.

But the plan shows it is the slimmest of galley kitchens, cleverly backed by a curtain wall of window.

All of the interiors are like this. Airy and roomy only when it’s open air days.

For example, the kids bunk bedroom (far corner) closes up like a garage door with a roll-up door when it’s inclement weather or for bedtime. (A bit depressing?)

But on most hot sultry nights in Seal Rocks, Australia, everything can be open.

The vacation home is set in the midst of dense wilderness near the ocean.

The lonely setting makes for a campground type vacation in a solitary and peaceful spot.

The barely there house is clearly designed for energetic young families who like to get out in the wild.

For big simple family gatherings in the wild – the house is just right.

Seal Rocks House 4 was designed by Australian architectural firm Bourne Blue Architecture.

This kind of glass louvred window has been a fixture in antipodean design vernacular since the 1950s.

Here it is used ironically for a certain spartan chic to this very uncompromising Australian plan.

This kind of spartan industrial chic is not to everyone’s taste.

The rental property was completed in 2009.

Hopefully the the “for rent” phone number listed on the stairs won’t get changed before the stairs need to be replaced.