IN the tiny community of White Cliffs, former interior designer Cree Marshall lives with her partner Lindsey White in a modernist-style dugout home that the pair have spent years building.
Ms Marshall said she first came to White Cliffs with the intention of staying a year to write a book.
“My cousin had a dugout here and I came up to stay for one year,” she said.
“That was 30 years ago.”
Working as an interior designer in cities throughout Australia before arriving in White Cliffs, Ms Marshall’s expertise and experience has clearly been utilised in the design of her home, which is comprised of partly dugout rooms where opals had been mined, along with a newer kitchen and a wall of windows overlooking the surrounding landscape.
Mr White, a builder, helped her with the execution of her ideas.
“I said to Lindsey, I’m too old to rough it, I want something nice,” she said.
“I was drawing designs on the floor and Lindsey had to cut the tiles up. He’d say, ‘tell me again why I’m cutting up perfectly good tiles?’”
The pair’s hard work has paid off with the house being so unique and meticulously crafted that they offer tours of ‘The White House’ to tourists.
Ms Marshall said in all her years working in interior design, she’d never thought she’d be designing a cave home, but she instantly fell in love with White Cliffs when she first arrived.
“The isolation works for me,” she said.
“The land is magic. When you look at the scenery, here it’s not pretty, it’s not beautiful, there’s nothing amazing about it, but it’s very powerful land, very strong, and I find that it gets into your soul.”
She’s also taught herself to make art from found objects that she uncovers throughout the town.
“When I was working, it was all art made by other people,” she said.
“Then when I came here I’d see things and think, someone could do something with that, maybe I could.
“I found things like wire, out in the field just lying around. I’d go for a walk and pick things up.”
Her home is decorated with artworks she’s made from collected junk.
“The local school kids would find pieces of rusty things and they’d come up to me and say ‘Cree, is this treasure?’”
The pair are currently working on building an spa and indoor/outdoor space, and continue to offer tours for whoever is interested in exploring their home.
Ms Marshall said she has no plans to live anywhere else.
“I certainly don’t want to leave,” she said.
