Mornington MEETS MIAMI

Designer Kate Walker allowed her imagination to soar when reinventing this family home, creating the vision of her wildest dreams.

- Elizabeth Wilson

Being able to envision and conjure a bold new identity for a 40-year-old property requires imagination and daring. And both were in ample supply when designer Kate Walker reimagined this residence as her own family home on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. Drawing on her love of what she calls “Caribbean Colonial” homes, she remodelled a well-preserved, unassuming two-storey 1980s dwelling into a glamorous, palm-fringed tropical beauty that would look at home in the Bahamas or Florida Keys.

When Kate bought the property in early 2020, it had been languishing on the market. “People couldn’t see beyond the tired interiors,” she says. As soon as Kate viewed the property, she was buzzing with ideas: “I had an immediate vision for the place. It was electric.” Above all, she could see it as a perfect nest for herself and her “Brady Bunch” – her partner Anthony, her children Charlie, 16, and Jemima, 14, and Anthony’s children Max, 13, and Annika, 11.