Alistair Smith helped build Walling's home at Lorne. He recalls:

Ed [Walling] came over to our house at times. My father was just preparing to put in a large window of the view - the view was of the whole estuary of Grassy Creek, the lighthouse and Cinema Point and the surf rolling below.

Anyway, my father had always had this dream after the war - that he was going to have this window...Edna Walling came in and said, "You're not putting the window where the view is, looking out to sea!" My father sort of, you know - [thought] "This lady is crazy - I've been waiting all these years to try and get that." "If you put that view there all the time and in that room you'll kill it because you won't see it." [Walling said] The point being that something that is always there - after a while you won't see it... and she said "You should wander to the studio or bedroom to experience the view, don't kill it." However, no one would believe that. But we didn't see it [the view] after we put it in because she was right.

...

She always put things a certain way, with a smile on her face, with a twinkle in her eye and with a sense of humour, she didn't push her ideas. She always put the point across in an easy going way without being pushy or forceful.

...she introduced me to Mozart music coming from the trees... always had Mozart music floating in amongst the trees.