In June 2023, high above the icy waters of Lake Wakatipu, a 10-tonne truck heaved and huffed its way along the windy cliffside road, a family’s entire life strapped to its trailer. At the start of a 200km journey, the truck and its cargo – a newly built cabin – slowly edged along the perilous Glenorchy-Queenstown Road and eventually entered Queenstown itself, teaming with the early winter tourist boom. There, it crept down the town’s mainstreet, taking out a couple of signs along the way, before heading south east toward Alexandra and then north to the tiny outpost of Cambrians – its final destination.
At 28m2, the dwelling wasn’t the biggest house to be transported on the back of a truck. But for Chanelle and Dave O’Sullivan, who for the past 16 weeks had poured every waking moment of their lives into building what would be their new family home, the small size didn’t make the relocation any easier to bear.
“I hated every minute of it,” says Chanelle, when asked about the cabin’s journey. ”That was the worst part for me. I said at the start I’m not gonna be involved with the relocation and drive behind the truck. Dave’s previous role involved a lot of moving of tiny houses and safari tents, so he was relatively happy to manage it, but I don’t think he enjoyed it either. There were some very stressed truck drivers once it got to Cambrians.”
The truck arrived at 10am to collect the cabin from the Glenorchy farm where the family had lived for the past year. Yet it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that it completed the normally two-hour journey to Cambrians and began the steep climb up the road to Chanelle and Dave’s newly purchased 30-acre block. But the work was far from over. Foiled by the steep, wet, metal road, the truck fell in behind a tractor, which hauled the ungainly convoy the last few miles. At one point however, the trailer slipped, sending the cabin into a tree which tore off half the iron on the roof.
Dave and a local friend spent the next few days frantically making repairs, before the convoy resumed and the cabin finally made it to its permanent site. There, another truck with a hiab lifted it onto its piles, allowing the family to move into their new home a few days later.
Settling in
That was about eight months ago now, plenty of time for Chanelle, Dave, Izzy (10) and Hunter (12) to settle into their new lives on what could be one of the most spectacular blocks in NZ. Nuzzled into a clearing within a pocket of pine forest, the cabin boasts sweeping views across ethereal alpine tussock plains towards the Dunstan Mountains to the south and the Raggedy Range to the west. Virtually untouched since it was first subdivided after the Central Otago gold rush in the late 1800s, the property has the feel of the boundless frontier – the only sign of human existence are mining sluices where grizzled prospectors panned for gold dust 170 years ago. It’s blissful, mountainous freedom in every direction.
For Chanelle and her family, whose living situation for the past 15 years has involved a constant migration around the South Island following Dave’s jobs as a farm manager, the Cambrian property is a slice of paradise they can finally call their own.
“It’s awesome, we’re really loving it,” says Chanelle. “I would have come here and lived in a tent for us to be on our own property. We are very content to be on the land.”
Despite previously residing in a 250m2 farmhouse in Glenorchy, the family have adjusted easily to the close quarters of the cabin, which has three bedrooms – two of them separate loft spaces. The kids are now settled in at the nearest school in Omakau – a 20 minute drive away – and spend much of their free time roaming the immense plains of uncharted land throughout the property.
“We’re only living in a small space, but we’ve all got our own closed off areas. And if the kids get too annoying, I kick them outside. Izzy’s got a horse, and Hunter’s got the motorbike, so they have no excuses.”
With little infrastructure on the property apart from a boundary fence, the living situation for the first few months featured a chaotic menagerie of horses, sheep, chickens, dogs and kids roaming freely across the block, all converging on the tiny cabin during family meal times. Installing fencing, along with countless other tasks, are all part of the lengthy to-do list, which Dave and Chanelle are perfectly capable of attending to with quintessential self-sufficiency.
“I would like to be richer so we can do things faster,” says Chanelle. “But the bonus here is that we both can kind of turn our hands to anything. So we don’t need to hire people to do things for us. We settled in very quickly and we have 30 years of ideas ahead of us.”
The pull of the South
If people were defined by the landscapes around them, Dave and Chanelle would be mountains and lakes. For the last 15 years – ever since Chanelle escaped Auckland and headed South at 19 years old, meeting Dave a few months later – the couple have yielded to the mystical pull of the lower South Island and made their home in its craggy corners.
From sheep stations and young farmers’ clubs in the Mackenzie Basin – where the two first met – to Timaru where they bought their first house, to the Ben Ohau range in Twizel, to a sheep station on the shores of Lake Hawea, and finally to Glenorchy and Cambrians, the couple have given themselves completely to the region, driven by a deepening connection to the land and the food that it produces.
“We were moving around with Dave’s jobs, and he’d climbed the ladder quite well into high country station management, and more recently, changing those traditional high country stations into more regenerative practices.
“And throughout that time, I’ve generally been working from home in the agriculture space through communications, marketing, business development, and started a couple of my own projects.”
However, despite being surrounded by thousands of hectares of farmland, the hard truth of it was they were really only tenants, unable to exercise full creative control over the land and its resources. By the time they discovered the property for sale in Cambrians, they were ready to be owners.
“We just wanted to buy as much land as we could afford. The property was under contract, so we contacted the agent and she said she’d get in touch if it fell through. And it did! We bought it in the winter of 2022.”
Housing has never been an issue for the family, for Dave’s various roles always came with some kind of lodgings. But when the owner of the Glenorchy farm decided to cease operations and make Dave’s role redundant with only four months’ notice to vacate the farm house, he and Chanelle were confronted with a choice about their next move. Having already bought the land, they made a “snap decision” that the next property they lived on would be their own. But for that to happen, they would need a house.
The build
Chanelle and Dave immediately embarked on an intensive construction project on the Glenorchy farm, very aware that they had only 16 weeks to complete it. They knew they had the skills, but confidence was lacking on Dave’s part. Fortunately, Chanelle had enough belief for both of them.
“We thought we were capable, and we can turn our hands to anything, so we wanted to give it a try,” she says. “I had the balls but I had to give Dave the confidence to take it on. I believed that he was capable of doing it, and he was.”
Capability aside, the project was exhausting. The autumn temperatures plummeted, and both Chanelle and Dave would continue working long into the freezing nights building the foundations, staining cladding or erecting framing, all in the beam of head torches. Chanelle had already designed the cabin with the help of an architect the year before, but almost every single physical component was built, installed, fashioned or retrofitted through resourcefulness and Dave’s deft hands.
“Dave ended up doing the large majority, even though the cabin was my idea,” says Chanelle. “One of the biggest challenges was that we’ve never done it before. So you’re not just putting things together, but you actually have to research and learn how to do it every single little bit.
“It was definitely one of those things where you can’t afford to spend too much time looking at the big picture. You actually have to focus on each little step as it comes. We’d be midway through a project and then YouTubing the next part before we’d got to it. If you looked at it too broadly, it was too big of a concept.”
Little by little, however, the cabin took shape. Although Dave and Chanelle could easily fund the build themselves, they kept the costs as low as possible by opting for secondhand, repurposed and recycled materials wherever possible (see box on page ). Facebook Marketplace became an essential virtual destination, while the Queenstown dump became an essential physical one. By the time their four months at the Glenorchy farm was up, the cabin was ready for the truck.
Building the Cabin
Determined to keep the budget low, Dave and Chanelle designed the build around two main outcomes. It needed to:
1: Be small and compact, while maximising livable and usable space.
2: Make use of recycled and repurposed materials.
Small and compact
They achieved the first outcome by designing two loft bedrooms at different ends of the pitched roof house – one for each of their children. This allowed everyone to have their own space, while making room for one of Chanelle’s non-negotiables: a full sized kitchen.
“I wanted maximum space, so it’s three metres wide with a full-size oven and a butlers pantry with a washing machine in it. It’s not a tiny kitchen, it’s very functional.”
They also installed plenty of shelving and a timber slab to serve as a breakfast bar. While a 28m2 dwelling doesn’t allow for an abundance of storage, it’s easy to clean and the acres of land outside provides plenty of space for sheds, cabins, or shipping containers.
Recycled materials
Thanks to internet sleuthing and word of mouth, this was relatively easy to achieve. The best example was the windows.
Originally quoted $8,500 for brand new windows and doors, Chanelle and Dave went to the Queenstown Refuse Centre and found some perfectly intact, double-glazed French doors.
“The amount of waste in the building industry is horrific. People just throw things out, especially in that Queenstown market. Materials that are practically new get dumped into the pit in Queenstown and then the digger bulldozes it. The lady who works there said she could build 10 houses a week with the amount of waste that goes in there.”
Chanelle found the other windows here and there, and painted all the joinery black to match. All in all, the complete joinery set costs $450, plus a box of beer, a bag of chips and a bar of chocolate.
Working the land
Take someone who has worked most of their life in agriculture, give them a bare piece of land, and chances are, that land will be producing something soon enough. Just so with Dave and Chanelle, who’s shared background in agriculture allows them to approach their land with the ambition and ethic of seasoned professionals.
The extensive list of jobs includes fencing off the waterways and ponds, and planting out the riparian areas with natives they’ll grow in an already-planted nursery. They’re also gradually fencing off each paddock and establishing a regenerative grazing system. Chanelle says the land is too fragile for heavier animals like cows, so they’ll opt for lighter stock such as sheep, which will provide a source of homekill meat.
Establishing a robust garden system is of high priority, especially important in a region that sees wind gusts of 200km, where there’s a frost every month year-round, and where snow has been known to fall on Christmas Day. Chanelle has built extensive raised garden beds – again with repurposed materials – which have provided much of the family’s food over the summer, although she’s had to modify them to stand up to the wind.
“The challenge here is actually the wind. But it just takes some time to learn the property. On the windiest day possible you just drop down over the front of our property and it’s completely still. So that’s where we’ll put the things like our orchard and the greenhouse and anything that is really susceptible to wind damage.”
Because pretty much nothing will grow out in the open during winter, Chanelle’s planning to build a walipini – an enclosed partially subterranean greenhouse that will help nurture her vegetables throughout the coldest months.
But even if the greens are scarce during the winter, the family will not go wanting for meat thanks to the abundance of game that ventures through the property.
“We are surrounded by wild deer and rabbits,” Chanelle says. “The dog caught a rabbit a few months ago, so I showed the kids how to gut it and skin it, and we turned it into nuggets that night. They were just like chicken but a tiny bit tougher. Next time I think I’ll make it into a rabbit and leek pie or something like that.”
While both she and Dave are able hunters, Chanelle has a rule that an animal should only be shot if it’ll end up on the table. It all fits in with her respect for sustainably-sourced food and quest for self-sufficiency, [principles that she’s determined to pass on to her kids.
“I think that’s actually what wealth is – land and knowledge. And that’s what drives me when it comes to our kids’ capabilities. They were in a little car seat while I was breaking down sheep and deer 10 and 12 years ago. So whether they paid attention or not, I have confidence that they’d know how to cook, hunt, and grow their own food if they needed to.”
Dave feels the same way, and has a strong desire to teach his kids practical skills to repair and create with their hands. “In one generation we’ve lost the confidence and ability to fix things ourselves,” he says.
Space and time
A major factor in their decision to move here was the desire to establish a viable business through the land. They have no shortage of ideas or opportunities, but they’ll do their research first to make the best – and most novel – move.
The catalogue of potential crop businesses includes growing hazelnuts inoculated with truffles, pine nuts, pine pollen, silver birch for syrup and mushrooms, and maple trees for syrup. The most important caveat is that the crop must provide more than one use.
“We could grow garlic or peonies or saffron and the things that people grow down here, but we’re really difficult in that we like to do something different and something new.
Observation is key – you spend the first 12 months observing and watching things, and taking notes and then that will help you with the next step.”
“Whatever does really well, that might provide an opportunity to buy some more land in the area and expand it. So that’s not out of the question as well.”
When it comes to working the land, growing food and making money, self-doubt can be the biggest impediment to success. But for Chanelle and Dave, having completed the build themselves, doubt doesn’t enter into the equation. They know they have the skills, the tools, and they certainly have the space.
“We just need a little tractor now. We might need to sell some kidneys or something, but we’ll get there,” she says with a laugh.
But yeah, we’re excited. That’s the bonus of not waiting to be retired to do these types of things. We’ve got time.”
Who: Chanelle, Dave, Izzy and Hunter
Where: Cambrians, Central Otago
What: Family home on an alpine bush block
Land: 30 acres
Insta: @coalpitgullyroad