Chris Bates built his wife’s dream house more than a decade ago when they moved to their 71-acre property in Echunga.

Having previously lived in the country before moving closer to the city for their children’s’ schooling, Chris and Michelle were “itching” to get back to country living.

“We found this place that had views forever, and it was a clean slate,” says Chris, a semi-retired builder.

“Because we’d been on acreage before we lived in the city, it was about getting back to what we loved, which was having space around us.”

Michelle had always loved Anne of Green Gables and wanted a weatherboard house in the New England and Southern Canadian style of the nineteenth-century fictional house.

An open living and dining area and American oak floorboards through the entirety of the ho

See Full Page