If only there was a button to pause this sunrise – like there is to open the blinds – so I could stay in bed at this remarkable coastal property and have those limestone cliffs hold the morning light exactly how it is now. There’s something supernatural too about the way the sun hits Split Point Lighthouse, turning it into a glowing candle on the headland. Maybe it’s because the lighthouse with the jaunty red cap is the one made famous by the classic television series Round the Twist, based on Paul Jennings’ best-selling children’s books. At Villa Maria, strange things do happen…
The eight-year-old house with six bedrooms stands at the end of a red dirt road carved into the coastal heathland, a stone’s throw from the clifftops at Airey’s Inlet on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road. Designed with family living in mind, it was recently made available as a holiday rental through Italian Villa Vacations. It’s a formidable fortress, concrete in fifty shades of grey hoisted to canopy level by a Besser block podium, but never domineering. Climbing the stairs for the first time and seeing that view is jaw-dropping. The crumbling cliffs plunge dramatically into the surf, with a colour palette as diverse as Uluru – stunted brown at sunset and glowing orange as a furnace in the morning as the sun drags itself up over the sea…
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