High price point for Snowys: Crackenback Ridge chalet

A cleverly designed alpine chalet is poised to set a price record in the Snowy Mountains ski playground.

Threbo chalet by Andrew Norbury.

Tussock, an alpine chalet on one of the highest blocks in Thredbo, was designed to create a soft edge between the village and the national park. On Crackenback Ridge, on the NSW snowfields, it last traded for a record $3.5 million in 2005 when it was sold by Melbourne architect Andrew Norbury of METIER3 and his then wife Jane Parker, one of the founders of Country Road. With the current owner now listing it for sale, the Thredbo price record is set to be easily broken.

Norbury designed the home, and construction costs were estimated at $1.2 million. The two-storey, five-bedroom residence has 15-zone underfloor heating, plus floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on snow gums and passing skiers. The ground floor is essentially subterranean, with only one of the four elevations revealing itself. Six hundred cubic metres of earth were carved out to slot the 450sq m house into the hill.

Most of the sleeping quarters are buried into the site.

The upper level is a pavilion structure that sits in a field of native grasses and flowers. It is substantially glazed, creating living areas with a sense of lightness and filtered views of the surrounding alpine environment. The entry is lit via flashing at the upper level, producing a diffused light that filters through an open staircase and into the subterranean entry foyer. This creates an unexpectedly light and warm entry, which then leads up into the pavilion spaces.

Reducing conventional height and visible bulk, the main sleeping quarters were buried into the site, with the living pavilion stepped back into the slope above. A wide, V-shaped wall of local granite forms the outer edge of the subterranean portion.

“The idea was that the bulk of the bedrooms would be warm and cozy downstairs, in a space where you don’t need much light, and the spaces above, which you inhabit by day, would be all glass,” Norbury noted. By pushing one level underground, he halved the permitted site coverage, allowing more space between buildings. The initiative also broke with the comparatively uniform style of houses in the village, a conscious goal of the architect. “You just see a single pavilion,” he said.

Norbury previously had another home on Crackenback Ridge, which won a commendation in the Robin Boyd Award, the premier national architecture prize for housing, in 1997.

Winter has come and so have early falls, and that means heightened interest in snow property the Alps. Tussock’s listing agent, Michelle Stynes at Forbes Stynes Real Estate, says Crackenback Ridge, with its ski-in, ski-out location, changed mountaintop living.

Since it was established in the late 1950s, Thredbo has become Australia’s premier ski destination and the site of some special chalets. In 1958, Garry Richardson, son of Merv, the creator of the Victa mower, asked his friend Peter Muller to design his ski lodge in Thredbo. Another trophy chalet, Seidler Lodge, with its massive angled beams, was designed by Harry Seidler and won NSW’s top housing prize, the Wilkinson award, in 1965. Sastrugi Lodge, designed by Otto Ernegg in 1958, was redesigned by Dawson Brown Architecture three decades later.

Extensive glazing makes the most of the views from the living area.

In recent years the most significant sale was De Dacha lodge, in the village, which fetched $2.25 million. The four-bedroom European alpine-style lodge is among the loveliest of Thredbo’s private abodes. Former society model Fiona Campbell sold the chalet, which has been an $8000-a-week peak-season rental, to the Punch family through Doug Edwards at Mountain High Real Estate.

Lendlease resort manager Albert Van der Lee built the property for $28,000 and lived there from 1962 to 1984. It traded in 1994 for a record $810,000 when Campbell and her then husband, publisher Matt Handbury, bought it from village developers Lendlease.

Around $300,000 will get you a studio apartment in central Thredbo. Buyers of properties within Kosciuszko National Park secure a Torrens Title leasehold, with leases running until 2057/58. 

Stynes says the tightly controlled credit market has prevented some would-be purchasers from proceeding, but hopes this may now change. About 70 per cent of buyers are from Sydney, with 25 per cent from Canberra and 5 per cent from other areas, including Queensland. Sales have been down by about 30 per cent on last year due to limited stock.