Set in Stone

by Stephanie Zhang July 31, 2024

A theatre producer and her artist and designer husband have transformed a period-style house in The Clare Valley into a stunning showcase of decades spent creating and collecting art and curiosities.

Blame the pandemic. Or perhaps a long, shared history of making drastic changes on a whim. Or just the desire to share ‘an adventure’. Whatever the cause, it led theatre producer Kerry Comerford and her artist and designer husband, Mark Thompson, to up stakes and buy Battunga homestead and guest cottages near Watervale in South Australia’s celebrated wine-producing Clare Valley.

“After 25 years of marriage and living in the same house on Lake Macquarie on the NSW Central Coast, we decided it was time for a change,” Kerry says. “For 20-odd years I’d been living and travelling as a producer for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group, so we were lucky if we managed to spend more than a night a week together.”

“Kerry is being modest,” Mark interjects. “She was vice-president for Asia Pacific, so she was always on the road. It took the enforced lockdowns to remind us that we really did like having dinner together and we figured it was time to learn what it was like to be married. We decided it was time for a change.” Mark started each day by mailing real-estate videos to Kerry and before long, they had been beguiled by the notion of a bluestone villa, built in 1996 but designed to resemble an 1850s homestead. The property came with four self-catering cottages, which meant it had its own income stream. And it’s how the couple decided to relocate interstate without ever having set foot in their new home.

“We’d met in South Australia, so we knew we’d liked living there,” Kerry says. “Mark can work anywhere, and I’d ended my commitments working for the Really Useful Group and Accessible Arts [which allows people living with disability to have full access to the arts and cultural sector]. The pandemic taught us we could work remotely, so it wasn’t as impulsive as it sounds.”

Nonetheless at the beginning of 2021, Kerry and Mark’s first real-life sighting of the property was on the day they settled in the middle of a drought. “We drove in with our Kelpie in the car through the dust and the dirt, probably thinking what have we done?” Mark recalls. “The promised dams were all dry, so we added a lot more water tanks and prayed for rain.”

Undaunted, Kerry and Mark set to work revamping the homestead, which was structurally sound, but decorated in the dark timbers and tones of the late ’90s. “It had been a five-bedroom home, which was not what we needed,” Kerry says. “We knocked out a few walls to extend the kitchen and living area, went ultra-modern in those parts and kept the period style in the rest of the house. We’re also lucky that the house is surrounded by three-metre wide verandahs, which keeps it cool in summer.”

Mark, who until his work was stalled by the pandemic, was known for his sets for productions ranging from Sydney Theatre Company plays to Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour was able to bring his formidable artistic talents, which he describes as “humanist/realist with a touch of Baroque”, to bear by painting wallpaper for fabulous murals in the dining room. “I was inspired by 18th-century French panoramic wallpapers,” he says. “There’s a company called Zuber that’s still block-printing wallpapers. The difference between their work and mine is that it could cost $50,000 to $60,000 to paper a room, whereas my work has more mistakes and wrinkles and cost me about three months of concentrated effort.”

The homestead is filled with souvenirs of the couple’s extensive travels, antiques and market finds, plus the odd theatre prop. A Chinese marriage bed made in Bali for the set of a show Mark worked on has pride of place in a bedroom. “I received it as part payment for work on a Perth production of The Odd Couple starring Angela Punch McGregor and Pamela Stephenson,” Mark explains. Elsewhere, the rooms are filled with Mark’s paintings and works in ceramic as well as soft furnishings made from fabrics Kerry has collected through the years.

“I’m meant to be semi-retired, so finally I have time to do something with all the things I’ve picked up in my travels,” Kerry says. She does, however, keep a finger on the performing pulse, by sitting on boards including that of Brisbane-based Circa Contemporary Circus and Sydney’s Hayes Theatre. Mark adds that Kerry works dawn-to-dusk readying the cottages for guests. “I chop the firewood, arrange the flowers, then hide in the garden while she does the rest,” he says. “Kerry’s attention to detail is second to none and from the hotel-quality bedding to the welcome pack stocked with local treats, guests are usually surprised by what we deliver.”

“After all those years staying in hotels, I think I have a fair understanding of what people want in a getaway,” Kerry adds. “Two teabags don’t really cut it when you’re staying for a weekend.” Battunga’s guests have access to wonderful boutique wineries, which can be accessed via the Riesling Trail along a disused rail line, as well as fine dining opportunities including the celebrated Watervale Hotel’s farm tour and six-course degustation menu. Walks in Spring Gully Conservation Park, a visit to historic Martindale Hall and the Sawmill gin distillery also top the visitor activities list.

“Most of the time, once the guests are settled, we leave them to their own devices,” Kerry says. “The vast majority of them are lovely people and we’ve even made a few new friends. It’s wonderful when our friends and family visit, because they can enjoy the cottages as well. We may have taken a bit of a punt moving here, but it’s not one we’ve regretted for a second.”