Glenda Dunlop and her husband Paul Vivian are transitioning from the Adelaide Hills to a more relaxed lifestyle in South Australia’s South-East.
When Glenda Dunlop and husband Paul Vivian bought property in South Australia’s Mundulla, the almost 300-kilometre drive down from the state’s capital didn’t faze them. So much so, Glenda makes the three hour drive about once every 10 days, between trips to her house in the Adelaide Hills and picking up the grandkids from school in the city. The couple bought the Mundulla property five years ago and, while it’s Glenda who has roots in the small town, it was Paul who initially wanted to buy there.
“My parents lived there most of their lives,” Glenda says. “So I grew up there until I was 18, then I moved south to Naracoorte for two years to do nursing, before deciding to move to the big smoke [Adelaide]. My mother was in her early 90s at the time and we’d take her around the district in the car. Being a farmer’s wife, she would just survey the lie of the land as she thought it was lovely. This one time, Paul was just in awe of the picturesque red river gum country that is Mundulla. He really fell in love with it and insisted we move down there.”
Finding property was no easy feat. “Mundulla is quite small [population just 436], and it’s really hard to secure a block of land, because retired farmers hang on to a few blocks in town,” Glenda explains. “So when this one came up, we jumped on it.” Situated in town, the half-acre block of land originally had a run-down cottage on it. “We found out it wasn’t Heritagelisted and, as it was really unsalvageable, we had it knocked down as part of the purchase agreement,” Glenda explains. But the couple held on to what they could. “There was a tin cottage on the block with a small outhouse, which we made into the garden shed,” Glenda says. “We found out it was built in 1912 by a gentleman named Robert Gillies for Mr D Kemp and his wife, Ellen. She was one of the pioneers of Mundulla, and in 1938 was the oldest living resident at the time.”
When it came to building on the land two years later, the couple chose to be sympathetic to the township and used galvanised iron for the home’s exterior. The north-facing, three-bedroom homestead is modern country in style and extremely energy efficient, with extra insulation in the walls and roof, ceiling fans in all the main rooms and double glazing on all the windows, which, when opened, allow cool breezes to enter the home, so air conditioning isn’t missed. The home’s interiors are a blend of modern and rustic, styled in an “eclectic manner”. An avid collector, with a keen eye for décor items, Glenda often picks up one-off finds at local antiques stores in Adelaide.
These include old barn doors, a full front door complete with etched-glass panels and a solid doorstep sourced from Adelaide & Rural Salvage. In another homage to her roots, Glenda has incorporated much of her late father’s furniture into the home. “Dad became a restorer of antique furniture later in life, so the items are just beautiful and unique, and would be far too expensive to purchase,” she says. These include bits and pieces dotted around the house, the side table at the front door, the gentleman’s wardrobe in the third bedroom and, Glenda’s favourite item of furniture, the bench in the kitchen, which was her father’s work bench. Made from a blend of Baltic pine and jarrah, it’s estimated to be at least 80 years old.
The garden is where Glenda’s handiwork truly shines. A retired landscaper, gardening is in her lineage, a passion passed down from her great-grandparents through the generations, with Glenda’s mother known locally for her prize-winning tulips. Avid readers of Australian Country may remember Glenda’s Adelaide Hills home featured in a past issue of the magazine (no. 23.4) — a home she acquired after being hired through her former company, Verdant Garden Designs, to landscape its gardens to get it ready for sale. Now that garden pretty much maintains itself, it’s onto the grounds at Mundulla.
Glenda spent 10 and a half weeks landscaping the gardens, “from top to bottom”. “When we bought the block of land, it was full of pepper trees, which we had to remove,” she explains. “There were also these two gorgeous mulberry trees that were more than 100 years old. One we kept, the other we just couldn’t, no matter how we tried to position the house on the block. There’s also an orchard with beautiful pear trees and a very old fig tree that we just pampered to bring back to life.”
In order to do that, they had to install a bore and rainwater tanks as there is no mains water in the region. Everything else in the garden was cleared, and Glenda quite literally worked from the ground up, lightly tilling the soil, laying down gypsum and adding hay and manure, which she and Paul picked up from the grounds after the Mundulla Show. “We went around and picked up every spare inch of hay and poo we could find,” she muses. In contrast to how she worked for clients, she did most of the gardening off the cuff . “I didn’t sit down and draw a plan, which is what I would have done in my heyday,” she explains. “I had an idea of where the paths would go, then I put all this stuff down and just let it sit, sit and sit. And then I planted it all out.”
Glenda took inspiration from the local landscape and planted natives in the front, which also work as a wind break, as well as bay trees and hakeas. Down the side, she planted pencil pines, then around the back, aka the romantic garden, there are salvias, roses, jasmines, penstemons and irises. The garden quickly started turning heads and, just two years in, Glenda was asked if she’d open it for a local event to raise funds for the hospital in nearby Bordertown, which she agreed to. The hospital holds a special place in her heart as it’s where her mother worked for most of her life. Before her death in early January this year, her mother was the oldest living midwife in the region. “Part of what I love about Mundulla is the community spirit,” Glenda says. “The locals really know and care about each other and there will often be events to raise funds for someone in need or a local cause. When Mum passed away, because she was an icon in the district, people were bringing around food and flowers and a local offered their catering services. That’s the kind of community it is.”
Glenda and Paul are so taken with the area that they plan to soon sell their home in the Adelaide Hills and move to Mundulla permanently. And there’s much to do at their doorstep, with the Limestone Coast and Coonawarra district nearby for great wine, spectacular Naracoorte Caves about 80km away and Mount Gambier just a two-hour drive south. Glenda has even rekindled friendships from her youth and fills in for the local dragon boat club when she’s down. As for the grandkids, with an array of local walking and bike tracks as well as numerous sporting fields, they will be spoilt for choice when they visit. And dedicated “NuNu” Glenda plans to still keep up with the school pick-ups. With travel plans also on the horizon, both overseas and around Australia, Glenda and Paul have a lot to look forward to. “We can’t wait to just start living out our retirement a bit more,” she says. “Life will be pretty good when we move down.”
