Weekend Cabin: Pumphouse Point, Tasmania

Tasmania knows isolation. Some 8,000 years ago, oceans flooded the Bass Strait, creating the island and cutting its Aboriginal residents off from what would become mainland Australia. The Tasmanians remained unconnected until European explorer Abel Tasman arrived, 500 generations with no outside influence, making them the longest isolated human group in world history.

Today, Tasmania is anything but cut off, yet it remains rugged and relatively untouched, proud in its extremes, one of which is the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, a 3.9-million-acre preserve and UNESCO site that takes up an astounding 20 percent of the Tasmanian landmass. And located right in the middle of all that, 900 feet down a causeway in Lake St. Clair, is the Pumphouse.

Well, there’s the Pumphouse and its companion, the Shorehouse. These two structures were built in the 1940s during wave of hydro development throughout the country. The Pumphouse held the turbines, the Shorehouse offices and maintenance. They ran for 55 years before closing in 1995.

Now they’re open again, but as singular, spectacular guest lodges. Renovation was conducted by Cumulus Studio architects, who left the rugged, weathered exteriors nearly untouched while gutting the insides and creating an earthy, sophisticated atmosphere of 12 rooms in the Pumphouse and six in the Shorehouse.

“The twelve studio-sized suites run lengthways down the two outer wings,” writes Cumulus,”leaving the central core devoted to communal lounge areas on each level, open at both ends so that the sight-line that begins from the flume continues through the building.

“A simple neutral palette has been used throughout in order to characterize a rugged simplicity and uncomplicated comfort into which the guests retreat. The untreated rough-sawn hardwood and exposed servicing pipework of the entry and common spaces subtly give way to more refined Tasmanian timber veneer panelling and exposed bent copper plumbing in the suites. These items also allude to the history of the place – the timber formwork of the off-form concrete and water once pumping through the core of the building.”

Rooms start at $240 Australian in the Shorehouse, $320 in the Pumphouse. For more, visit http://www.pumphousepoint.com.au/.

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