Almost as soon as they'd finished melding together a beautiful old Queenslander with another cottage moved onto their two hectare block, their renovated dream home burnt to the ground, in February 2013.

After that shock subsided they discovered their insurance policy had provisions for an architect and so they engaged the man who has won awards for landmarks such as the Tree of Knowledge installation at Barcaldine and who, in their words, 'understands the outback'.

Brian Hooper's brief was for something low maintenance and easy to clean, and with a low fire risk in mind.

"I didn't even want to have toilet paper," Ms Ringrose said, only semi-jokingly. "There's not much timber in the house."

The couple loved their former timber home but they knew they couldn't replicate it. Instead they found a new challenge in creating something different.

While the materials - a steel frame, honed Besser brick exterior columns, and a polished cement foundation slab - are modern concepts, the design borrows from the original home.

"Our bedroom was down one end in the old house, and then the kitchen in the middle and the kids were down the other end," Ms Ringrose said. "When I said I think we should do three pavilions like we had in the old place, that's what Brian has done."

The three elements are bisected on one side by an interior courtyard that can be opened or closed, and by the kids' TV room on the other side. A long breezeway sweeps the length of the home in an east-west direction, while glass doors open out onto the wide front lawn and entertaining area on the northern side, where the roofline extends.

Corrugated iron panels, honouring the tin sheds that typify the west, shield the external southern walkway and hide away the ubiquitous air conditioning units.

"I didn't really think about all the glass I'm going to have to clean for the rest of my days," Ms Ringrose laughed as she recalled her brief for a low maintenance design.

She also admitted to giving herself three toilets to clean - one in the parental ensuite, one with the children's area amenities, and the other positioned close to a back entrance for general use.

Rather than being given free rein, sunlight and breezes are optimised through the clever positioning of the home and with louvres, another symbol of western Queensland living.

"The way Brian's designed it, the home is very warm in winter," Ms Ringrose said.

"It stays quite an even temperature really, all year.

Manipulating the internal temperature is largely a matter of juggling the right combination of louvres and doors to retain the cool or the heat in the structure and its floor.

They had always planned on putting a fireplace in the indoor/outdoor courtyard, but are now adamant that it's not needed.

"It's so warm - there'd be two days in the year where you'd put it on," Ms Ringrose said.

The family, which consists of Bill, Mary-Ann and their three children, Will, 21, Harriet, 19, and Dougal, 16, have occupied the home since September 2015, and say they wouldn't change a thing about its design after four years of putting the structure through its paces.

According to Dougal, it doesn't feel any different to the last home.

"It's modern but it just feels like we've been here a while," he said.

While the three children are away from home a lot now - Dougal attends boarding school in Brisbane, Harriet is studying at university in Brisbane, and Will is working on a property outside Longreach - their mum said they wanted to make the house something they could come back to anytime and have their own space.

Their personalities are reflected in their bedrooms, Dougal's showing his love of rugby union with signed Wallabies and Reds jerseys on the walls, plus one from the Longreach team that the Ringrose Button accounting business sponsored.

Jenie Fawckner prints have a special place in Harriet's room. Both Fawkner and Ms Ringrose are originally from Blackall, and one of her works was lost in the fire.

Longreach resident Anne Moloney kindly replaced the burnt artwork with a pair of prints and so they have become treasured possessions, along with one of Fawkner's more modern works.

Harriet had been boarding at Somerville House in Brisbane all of three weeks when she received the news that her home had been destroyed by fire. The school undertook a fundraiser, resulting in enough money to buy a print to complement the other two.

There are other pieces with similar stories to tell, most notably the huge dining table made from a wool table and topped with glass.

It comes from Culladar, an outstation of Cronulla, north of Longreach, and was a housewarming present from good friends, the Brown family.

The job of moving it in fell to their builder, Greg Clarke from Rippa Enterprises at Longreach.

"He had trouble finding a carrying company that would bring it. About six blokes carried it in here, and we have not moved it since," Ms Ringrose said.

"I love that it's about wool. It fits perfectly in the house; it's as though we built the house for it."

The warm amber tones of the timber are contrasted with clear plastic dining chairs, another nod to the old and the new.

Nearby in the closed-in courtyard is a metal-framed easy chair, which was beside the old home and became covered in its charred remains, but is like new again after a sandblasting.

Likewise Ms Ringrose's office desk is made from the steps to the kitchen of the earlier home, which survived with only a few scorch marks thanks to the way the wind was blowing on the night of the fire.

A garden gazebo that had been constructed out of bridge timber from the old Blackall-Yaraka railway line got scorched but enough survived that they could cut the posts down into seats for the outdoor firepit.

Even the red specks in the polished concrete flooring have significance - the aggregate used was from the plentiful supply of gidyea stones in the district, which played havoc with the polishing equipment thanks to its durable nature.

Ms Ringrose described Greg "Rippa" Clarke as a master at his trade and said they were very lucky to have him.

One of the challenges was putting the roof on, which is a single piece of tin, to eliminate the possibility of leaks, thanks to its slight gradient.

"That was an expensive exercise," Ms Ringrose commented.

The north-west slant of the roof means that while solar panels are desired, they don't work on the roof so remain a work in progress.

All the construction work was done under the watchful eyes of the Ringrose family, who moved into an existing shed and a tiny 'hootchie' brought in from a local property. Difficulty finding somewhere to live in the central western town that would accommodate their chooks, cat and dog, plus having a pool in the garden that survived the fire, decided them on the minimal living option.

"The builders were probably not excited that we lived there the whole time," Ms Ringrose said, adding that while it was "a bit bohemian'" they were over it after a couple of years.

The 'Ringrose Residence', as it's known to its architect, Yeppoon-based Brian Hooper, has been a winner for him as well as the family at Longreach.

At the 2017 Australian Institute of Architects Queensland awards section, the design received the Colorbond Award for steel architecture, the CQ regional project of the year award, and a state commendation for residential architecture.

Mr Hooper said the Ringrose family had been incredible clients who put a lot of trust in him with their design brief to reinforce the utilitarian rural shed vernacular.

"They had resided on the five acre site for 10 years in an eclectic mix of raised timber structures incorporating a modest homestead, shearers' kitchen and small sleeping quarters originally sourced from neighbouring rural properties," he said.

"The brief required us to rethink the original material palette and raised timber structures. The residence loosely references the spatial arrangement of the original three interconnected structures albeit under one roof.

"Simple in plan form, the home climatically positions all liveable spaces along the north edge with utility spaces flanking the south. The private sleeping zones are split between the east and west extremities with the main living areas centrally located.

"Formalised entries are ambiguous in a rural homestead context, and the back door generally becomes the day-to-day access point. As the existing carport was to be retained, this drove the planning of the informal entry and living areas.

"Large operable openings to the landscape create the ambiguity across its thresholds, and provides flexibility to shut down in the extreme weather experienced in western Queensland.

"The generous northern roof overhang and external blade columns shades the home from any direct light for the critical hot months but allows sunlight to seep internally during the cold winter period."

The house is connected to the town river water supply but they're not able to hook into the sewerage line and so their septic system has been designed to filter through layers of sand and gravel in big underground tanks, which can then be recycled onto the garden.

Rainwater tanks for drinking water 'fill in about six seconds", thanks to the roof area.

Ms Ringrose was expecting a full house for Christmas, where everyone could congregate around the expansive kitchen island bench between meals.

For that bag of ice or frozen prawn treat, it will be a short trek down the breezeway to where the freezer is located in the laundry.

"We wanted to put it in the pantry but it would have taken up too much room," Ms Ringrose said.

"It might annoy some people but it doesn't bother me. If you want ice-cream, you have to work for it."