waterfronts in the Pittwater, which
stretches from Newport up to Barrenjoey
Head, where the Hawkesbury River empties
into the Pacific.
Built on a long, narrow site in 1985,
this island retreat was designed by Ken
Woolley for his friend and longtime
collaborator Brian Pettit. Woolley was a
prominent mid-career architect by then, a
principal of Ancher Mortlock and Woolley,
and working on the Commonwealth
Law Courts at Parramatta. Pettit was a
keen sailor and gregarious businessman
and developer behind the home-building
company Pettit and Sevitt, which had closed
its doors in 1978.
Though the house was intended as
their weekender, the Pettits lived in it
permanently for ten years – entertaining
lavishly and often – before selling to the
current owners, Louise and Greg, who are02
S
cotland island is a short boat ride
from the mainland via Pittwater
estuary – an hour’s drive north of
Sydney. We make the trip in a five-
metre timber runabout that Greg Roberts
built by hand some years ago.
From the water, the corrugated roofs
of the Pitt Point House protrude like huts
among the trees, their grey/green cedar
weatherboards blending into the bush.
We tie up at a pontoon and walk the
sixty-metre jetty to Greg’s boatshed, then up
to the sandstone terrace and outdoor room
that Greg and wife Louise enjoy year round.
Scotland Island is home to just a few
hundred permanent and holiday residences.
To its north and west is Ku-ring-gai Chase
National Park, to its east, the Northern
Beaches peninsula. Pitt Point House is
unique among these residences, being one
of only a handful of true north-facingalso boating and design enthusiasts. Notable
guests of the Pettits had been the Fijian
High Commissioner (at Brian’s sixtieth
birthday party) and former prime minister
Bob Hawke and his second wife Blanche
d’Alpuget, who honeymooned there in 1995.
The house is a collection of buildings
and shapes in a seemingly ad hoc
arrangement, “as if they had developed over
time,” according to Walter Barda, who was
an associate director of Woolley’s practice at
the time and produced designs and drawings
for the project.
“The idea was a small village of clustered
vernacular elements: main house, water
tower, [the guest wing] – it’s an island
house after all. To that we gave skewed
geometries and overscaled pitched roofs
chopped in half [living room and main
bedroom]. From an aerial perspective, the
plan kind of wiggles through the site, some