Walking back from a walk along Nuns Beach one morning with my friends, we couldn’t remember where the path behind the holiday house we were staying had been. I pulled out my phone and checked my maps.
“Down further,” I said, pointing. We followed my index finger and there, poking out from the trees between the dunes and houses was the sharp white roof of Sagres Queenscliff, the five-bedroom, three-floor holiday house where we were spending the weekend. It was the only house visible from the beach.
“There is no way you would be allowed to build such a tall house in this day and age,” Sagres Queenscliff’s owner Jo Youl tells me later. “Obviously, I am biased, but I think this house is different from any other properties in the Bellarine. It is truly a unique block, location and build.”
Sagres lies a 50-minute drive from Avalon and an hour and 45 minutes from Melbourne in the Bellarine Peninsula, the opposite side of Port Phillip to the Mornington Peninsula. Geelong is the gateway to the Bellarine. It overlooks Nuns Beach and Port Phillip, with views from floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony of ships sailing between Melbourne and Geelong.
The all-white house was built in 1991 by Lady Susannah Clarke and Sir Rupert Clarke who engaged the late architect Wayne Gillespie. In 2022, it was renovated by their daughter Youl.
“Sagres is all Susannah, as she had the foresight and will to find the block, engage Gillespie and many years later, purchase the other block that runs off the main room,” says Youl. “The search for the spot started in the late 1980s, and it was purely the right time that this spot was available.”
The 2022 renovations took eight months to complete, with Youl also working with interior designer Emily Fitzgerald to create a modern Mediterranean feel throughout. It was important for Youl that the updated interiors both complemented the original design and blended with the house’s surroundings.
“Layers of neutral tones and textures build a base for colour, soft patterns and fun objects,” says Youl. “The home is a brilliant mix of colour and texture in a beautiful and calm environment.”
Artwork by local artist Janey Forbes decorates the wall. The bar hidden under the staircase is filled with colourful Bonnie and Neil glassware. And a couch and the upstairs bed are by MCM House.
On my visit, I claimed the master bedroom on the third floor, with a bed facing floor-to-ceiling windows. I spent hours in bed, bundled in one of the home’s four multi-coloured thick robes I found in the bathrooms, looking out at the ships passing by.
I also floated on a lilo in the pool out front of the house, added during the home’s renovation. Though my friends and I could’ve stayed at the house the whole weekend, dining on the extra-cost frozen meals in the home’s freezer or grabbing groceries before arriving, we explored the area, dining at Arlo Wine Bar, Queenscliff General Store and PikNik Café and window shopping along Hesse Street.
One of my favourite activities during the stay was walking to Point Lonsdale Lighhouse, one of three lighthouses on the peninsula. From a path behind the house, I walked on the sand and then a wooden pathway, passing locals, some with their dogs, and other visitors, starting their Sunday with a coastal walk.
Sagres is named after a coastal town in Portugal and with its blinding white structure, olive trees by the door swaying in the wind and tasteful pops of colour in its interior design, it certainly felt like I could have been there.
But mostly, I walked away from the weekend — from spending time at the house and enjoying its surroundings — feeling like I had truly experienced a quintessential Victorian coast weekend away. Which is what the Clarkes and Gillespie intended.
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