Treetop oasis in Aldgate
Nestled among the treetops, this Aldgate family home has been completely renovated to champion comfort and functionality with a timeless palette.
Charming small towns full of history, nestled among wineries and surrounded by trees that change with the seasons make the New South Wales’ Southern Highlands region a popular weekend getaway destination.
It also has an undeniable likeness to the Adelaide Hills.
Originally from South Australia but living in Sydney at the time, Nardia Munt, and her partner Clinton had always planned to make a tree change to the popular Southern Highlands towns of Bowral or Berry.
But during the peak of the pandemic in 2021, the appeal of moving closer to family forced a change in plans, and the proximity of the Adelaide Hills to the CBD only cemented the decision.
“Anyone from Sydney who’s never been to Stirling will drive through and go ‘Oh my god it’s just like Bowral’, and that was the idea,” says Nardia, a project management and organisational development consultant.
“But truth be told, if you want to drive from the Southern Highlands to Sydney, on a bad day it’s nearly four hours, on a good day it’s two hours.
“Being able to have a city lifestyle, but feel like we were a three-hour drive out of a main centre, we just couldn’t think of anywhere else in Australia that we could do that.
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Nardia says location was their main priority and a lot of the homes they saw in the Hills were at the bottom of valleys or cast in shadow by the steep terrain.
When they found 9 Keroma Drive at Aldgate, it was obvious that it needed work, but Nardia had a vision and the location couldn’t be matched.
“For us, the house was very secondary; you can change absolutely anything about a house, within reason, but you cannot change the location,” she says.
“Here we’ve got that sunny outlook, we get to overlook the treetops, but we’re right in town.”
They were close to levelling the extremely dated home and rebuilding anew, but its strong foundations and sturdy bones couldn’t be replicated.
While the structure remained, they changed almost everything else about it.
After an extensive three-year renovation, the home now features five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a media room, a pool and outdoor alfresco, an orchard, seven vegetable gardens and a fire pit.
“Every single room was changed, so effectively it’s brand new,” Nardia says.
“It’s got all new wiring, all new plumbing, it’s a smart home so it is completely voice activated and programmable, every single window was replaced, it’s double glazed, it’s fireproofed – we did the full work.
“We wanted to treat the old home with respect, but still have every single mod-con that we could put into it but retain the heritage to the home as well.
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“I’m certainly cost a lot more to renovate than it would’ve done if we’d rebuilt from scratch, but it was important to us to retain the integrity of the home.” 
The original structure has also been extended to accommodate a generous, open-plan kitchen, living and dining area.
When planning the renovation functionality was paramount.
“I wasn’t going to prioritise form over function, because I’d lived in those houses before,” she says.
“Every decision that was made was around whether it was functional, and whether it worked for a family of five and two dogs in the home.
Nardia wanted to keep the aesthetics light and bright, its coastal palette of soft blues, greens and whites capturing the retreat feel they were seeking with their tree change.
“We wanted it to be timeless. We didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon of a few of the trends that were going around at the time and think in three years that the home already felt dated,” she says.
“We feel like we’re away for a long weekend every weekend.”
Nardia and Clinton lived in their Aldgate home for a year, waiting on development approvals, before they could begin construction. Without effective heating and cooling, they, along with their children, were forced to layer up to fight the frigid climate and when it was finally time to renovate, thermal comfort was at the top of Nardia’s list.
“There was no heating or cooling apart from this old – probably 50-year-old – combustion fireplace for the whole house, so we’d sit in puffer jackets and beanies, and we’d sit in bed in the morning and we could see our own breath. It was terrible,” she says.
Now, the home is double insulated and has hydronic heating, double glazed windows, underfloor heating in the bathrooms, the air conditioning is individual to each room instead of larger zones of the home, and each room has an overhead fan. Subsequently, the home can retain a constant temperature all year round – something Nardia will miss most.
Nardia and Clinton are now looking to find a few hectares of land where they can eventually spend their retirement.
“We’re really torn because we really don’t want to move from here, but the ultimate plan was always to be on a larger acreage, and I think the timing is good. We’re really proud of the home,” she says.
“It is exactly as I’d pictured.”
The sale of 9 Keroma Drive, Aldgate, is being handled by Taylor Bishop of The Address Real Estate.
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