Innholdsfortegnelse for December Issue#1 2017 i Australian Country Homes

As the British horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll observed “the love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies”. So it is with the love of country in all its diversity. From the grand country estates and sprawling homesteads that only an accident of birth can provide to the charming and cosy cottages that are furnished on the smell of an oily rag and with an astute eye on op shop windows and roadside collection points, the country home is a varied canvas upon which to make a mark. However, the element that ties them all together is usually the garden. Whether it’s a sprawling park-like expanse, a kitchen garden packed with fruit and veg to nourish its owners or a charmingly haphazard collection of cottage flowers and plants, the…

A winding ascent along a road lined with towering gums leads to a little village of workers’ cottages, built in the 1890s and early 1900s for employees of the Mount Crosby water scheme that had been set up nearby to provide for Brisbane’s growing population. It’s a world apart from the CBD 20-odd kilometres away, with the kind of quaint general store that still exists under corrugated iron awnings over cracking concrete footpaths in Australia’s old towns and enclaves too small to warrant a second look by developers working for the big three. The cottages were likely never meant to be forever homes, built quickly and cheaply and often not quite square, but to the lucky few who live behind the neatly modest picket fences, they’re cherished for every imperfection.…

First impressions count. And sometimes, first impressions linger in the heart and mind, and trigger one of those life-changing moments upon which Hollywood thrives. In 1989, garden design consultant Barbara Landsberg fell in love at first sight with an enchanting historic estate in the Blue Mountains. Her friend was visiting from England, and they set out from Sydney together to visit the friend’s relatives, Helen and Gary Ghent, at Withycombe in Mount Wilson. “We drove up to Withycombe in the wind and rain in my old Toyota Corolla, worried that we would not make it up the mountain,” Barbara recalls. “We got lost on our way and arrived very late in the dark, to be greeted with the lights of the house shining out through the dark and rain. Helen…

There’s a painting hanging in the homestead at Brickendon that dates from 1833. It shows the view from what was then William Archer’s relatively new home to Woolmers, the farm his brother, Thomas, had established in 1817, when he became the first of four brothers to settle in the northeastern corner of Tasmania. The landscape is instantly recognisable today, as 184 years later the walkway that links the two homesteads is still intact, as are the hedgerows that fenced the property and the suspension bridge that spans the Macquarie River as it winds its way between the two historic farms. In 2010, the sibling properties gained World Heritage-listing for their significant place in Australian convict history. They became part of an elite list of 11 sites around Australia that includes…

As the self-confessed child of backpacking hippie parents, Kirsty Ballentine Turnbull says a gypsy spirit is in her DNA. Born in London to a South African dad and an Australian mum, Kirsty spent her early years in a Kombi exploring the world with her intrepid parents. They eventually settled back in Perth when she was aged five, but wanderlust was never far from the surface, and the growing family was often on the road seeking new adventure. When she was 14, the family upped stakes and moved to Brisbane, where she completed her high schooling and went to uni. The peripatetic family moved on to Melbourne, but Kirsty flew in the face of tradition, stayed in Brisbane to graduate and build a corporate career in marketing. “By the time I…

The plan, as much as Roz and Peter Seppelt had one, was to take Peter’s family’s hobby farm and transform it into a business. But as is always the case, there were a few unexpected twists and turns along the way. Nonetheless, after slightly more than a decade of hard slog, the Seppelts now have an enterprise that both perpetuates Peter’s family tradition of hospitality and takes it to a whole new level. Peter is a fifth-generation scion of the house of Seppelt, which was founded in 1851 when Jospeh Seppelt, a migrant merchant from Prussia (now Poland) arrived in Australia and established a vineyard and winery called Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley. Today the Canary Island date palm-lined driveway leading to the splendid bluestone winery buildings are a landmark…

Dominic Romeo always knew there was something special at the end of the narrow driveway high on the southern slopes of Mount Macedon. While some would-be buyers shuddered when they arrived at the top, Dominic knew he had found his next home as soon as he opened his car door. “I could tell from the front gate,” he says. “I just knew that up that drive there was something amazing.” “I’ve gone with quite bold carpets and curtains and used chandeliers to brighten the interiors up and create a bit of drama, while ensuring there is some warmth in what are large rooms.” Karori is a heritage-listed, two-storey, six-bedroom hill station property on Victoria’s Mount Macedon, an hour north of Melbourne. When Dominic came to have a look at it,…

In a previous life Natalie Holt was living in Sydney and had a successful career as the sales and marketing manager for Avon Australia. Then she chucked it all in for a tree change, migrating to the NSW North Coast. She was lucky enough to land on her feet fairly quickly career-wise, and today is the sales manager for the iconic vintage-inspired bedding and clothing label, Lazybones. The next part of her dream took a little longer to turn into a reality; she wanted to buy an old house, move it to the town of Bangalow, strip it back and create the home of her dreams from scratch. With a lot of hard work, a good dollop of ingenuity and help from a loving family member, that’s exactly what she…

As shopping lists go, Rose Hawkins drew up a doozy when she went searching for the right property for relocating her family and yoga studio. With four adult children she needed five bedrooms so they and their partners and children could all comfortably visit at the same time. Having grown up in the wide open spaces of the Northern Territory and central western Queensland, Rose knew her dream home needed to be have some land around it. She also wanted to run yoga classes and retreats from home so a studio was another box on the wish list. It may have taken five years of searching, but amazingly Rose found precisely what she was looking for not far from Montville in the ranges behind the Sunshine Coast. “The house not…

“I’m not leaving until I’m carried out in a wooden box,” says Simone Hubbard as she leans casually on her kitchen counter, surveying the historic city of Ipswich that undulates to the horizon beyond her cedar-trimmed windows. It may be an odd thing for a 40-year-old to assert, but it’s the perfect indicator of how much she adores her abode. Lakemba is perched grandly on Denmark Hill, an area rich in history and brimming with old homes in varying states of repair. Many have been skillfully restored, and a drive along Chelmsford Avenue will have lovers of Federation-era architecture enraptured. But that was certainly not what Simone and her husband, Jason, felt when they first spotted Lakemba for sale. “The roof needed replacing, there was rot in the decorative timber…