“It’s not all about perfect”
The house with its soaring cathedral ceilings sits on the road opposite Belongil Beach. The beach on a good day is peak Byron Bay. In the lingering golden hour in the evening there are fires, kites, waves crashing, dogs running, the mountains in the distance, the sun slowly sliding down behind the dunes. It is where Shelley Craft takes her two dogs to run in the shallows every day.
The two gentle ridgebacks, Aldo and Rocco, greet you with mild curiosity as you come through the gate. Aldo, says Shelley, “used to gallop like a racehorse in the water”. But now that he is older “he knows his limits. He stops where he wants to stop and sits and waits for us to come back.”
Shelley and Christian Sergiacomi were married on Belongil Beach in 2009, at Beaumonts Beach House just across the road. This has always been their special place. “This was our spot,” says Shelley. “We always knew we would end up here.” After their wedding they were driving back to Melbourne, “and Christian and I looked at each other and said ‘what are we doing? Why are we going back?’.”
They already commuted between cities for work. “We wanted to start a family. We knew this would be a wonderful place to do that. We appreciated the fact that there would be some work sacrifices, that
