Mary and Peter Riedel created The Church House B&B in Fish Creek
Planning your next getaway? This couple renovated an old church that was in pieces — literally — to build their Fish Creek home. And you can stay there, too.
MARY and Peter Riedel were all set to start building a new home on their 8ha property at Fish Creek, in South Gippsland, when they spied an advertisement in The Weekly Times.
“It was an ad for a clearing sale and at the very bottom in fine print it said ‘historic church’,” explains Peter. “I saw the ad and ignored it. But Mary saw it and said ‘buy the church’.”
Adds Mary: “I don’t know why, but it intrigued me. I love anything old.”
It was a fateful moment: their home designs were thrown in the bin and the couple decided to buy the church, “which was dismantled in pieces in a shed”, and rebuild it on their farm.
The result is The Church House, a magnificent restored building transformed into their home and a bed and breakfast, which even featured on ABC’s Grand Designs Australia.
The property has vistas across to Wilsons Promontory in the south and the Strzelecki Ranges to the north, and includes the
Riedels’ 1000-vine vineyard (where Peter makes his own wine), a 200-tree olive grove (the couple outsource the making of olive oil), and an extensive fruit and nut orchard and vegetable garden.
Combined with a small flock of Dorpers, a few Angus-Hereford cross (home-butchering about six lambs and a cow a year), as well as chooks for eggs, the couple specialise in serving guests meals sourced from the farm.
But, the Riedels say, none of this was ever part of their plan.
The couple were living in Melbourne — Peter was a coastal engineer who worked in Gippsland and Mary a self-taught interior designer — when in 2005 they bought the 8ha.
“It was an empty block with just one tree,” says Peter, admitting the plan was initially to build a holiday house.
When they saw the clearing sale advertisement, their plans changed.
The church was originally St Georges Anglican, built in 1876 in Royal Park, Melbourne. It was set to be demolished to make way for new housing when a couple in Neerim South bought it, disassembling it into parts and storing it in a shed.
The Riedels bought the structural pieces for $20,000 at the clearing sale in 2009, requiring two truck loads to move it 90 minutes to Fish Creek.
“It wasn’t the weight but the proportions that were difficult to move. The trusses were 6 metres wide and 3.6 metres tall and so we moved it early in the morning to avoid traffic,” Peter says.
The purchase included oregon, baltic pine and cedar beams, trusses, floorboards, as well as windows, doors, and weatherboards.
Unfortunately the weatherboards, windows and doors were unusable and some timbers had to be recycled or repurposed into other uses.
Ultimately, though, with the shape of the building pre-designed, the couple say building it was relatively easy, taking about a year and finished in October 2010.
“Grand Designs visited each month for updates, filming us from the start which included building a 600 metre long road up a slope.”
Like most grand renovation projects, the budget blew out on this one, too. On the TV show Peter initially estimated a budget of $400,000, but the end result was double that. “I underestimated the workmanship. The height of everything (the ceiling is 8 metres high at its apex) makes a lot more hours to put it together.
“At times we’d have up to 12 tradies on site.”
Adds Mary: “Some of the windows at the front cost us more than we anticipated, but it was a must. Either you do something well or you don’t.”
They also went to great lengths to source materials, including old doors from a Lithuanian chapel, and they hired a Fish Creek blacksmith to make hallway lights.
In 2015 the Riedels also started work on an extension, which allowed them to open the bed and breakfast in 2017 (it sleeps eight people).
Many couples don’t survive the stress of a renovation, let alone running a business in partnership, including cooking together.
But Mary and Peter — who have been married about 45 years — say it is the combination of their individual skills that made the project come together. “My engineering skills and Mary’s design skills worked well together. If it wasn’t for that, it would be difficult,” Peter says.
“As soon as I saw the structure, I could see it would work and Mary could see the design, the finished product.”
Mary agrees.
“There’s a romance to a restoration project like this.
“Living here is just spectacular, the morning and afternoon light, looking out to the vista.”
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