Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 6 i Australian Country Homes

Welcome to the first issue of Australian Country Homes for 2019. As well as curating a collection of great homes for your reading pleasure, we’ve created accompanying looks pages to help you achieve each design style. We’ve also shone the spotlight on bathrooms this issue, from the quaint and quirky to the sybaritic and sumptuous. As poet and author Sylvia Plath observed in her novel The Bell Jar: “There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: ‘I’ll go take a hot bath’.” All the…

“I didn’t do it for you,” artist Criss Canning candidly admits as she ushers us into the kitchen at Burnside, the home she shares with her nurseryman husband, David Glenn, in the central Victorian goldfields region. Indeed the display that greets us resembles one of her celebrated still lifes, featuring vases filled with flowers, platters and bowls laden with fruit, and jars and bottles meticulously lined up on the shelves. “David brings me flowers every day,” she adds. “They are so beautiful, it would be unthinkable not to make the most of them.” Criss and David inherited the bluestone homestead with a 40-acre (16-hectare) property they bought at Avoca in 1991. It took the best part of a year to relocate David’s Lambley Nursery from the Dandenong Ranges to central…

For as long as she can remember, Kristine Franklin has loved decorating and rearranging furniture. By the age of 18, she had compiled a scrapbook packed with magazine cuttings as an aide-memoire for how her dream home would look. And when she and her husband, Luke, bought that home, or at least a modest first-home-buyer’s version of it on Melbourne’s northeastern outskirts, she was finally able to start translating her plans into reality. Several years down the track, that house is as camera ready as any we’ve ever photographed, with almost every room a tribute to Kristine’s signature style, thrifty approach and countless hours of hard slog converting pre-loved and bargain furnishings into handsome pieces. Yet she says it’s still a work in progress and probably always will be because,…

I’m not at all surprised when Fay Gamble reveals her tiny cottage in Goolwa, South Australia, is at least the seventh she has purchased, revamped and passed on. There’s no doubting her flair, creativity and experience. Walls are whitewashed with many coats, backyards are blitzed and rooms are repurposed according to their light and dimensions. “The first cottage I spruced up was in Yankalilla,” she says. “My husband and I bought it for negative-gearing purposes but when our marriage broke up, I was left living there. I had no money and I couldn’t afford to maintain it, so I put all my efforts into decorating and cleaning it up for resale.” That positive outcome 13 years ago triggered a light-bulb moment — the realisation that buying and selling could be…

Made from cool wool, the Dandelion Yellow Holly dress from Smitten Merino is perfect for those trans-seasonal days where you just don’t know what to wear. Brighten up a cloudy Monday or make sunny Sundays even brighter with this lightweight Merino wool dress. Pair with some nude heels and a light jacket for the ultimate spring outfit that will turn heads wherever you walk. Ethically made in Tasmania with free shipping throughout Australia and New Zealand. smittenmerino.com A mix of quintessential vintage design with a contemporary edge, Colonial Castings Lifestyle’s extensive outdoor range provides long-lasting furniture solutions for both commercial and residential spaces. Stylish and durable, the aluminium six-seater Chelsea table and Morocco chairs (sold separately) are perfect for a lively outdoor entertaining space. Made in Australia. colonialcastingslifestyle.com/products Cooking has…

Jane Rennie-Hynes is fearless in her approach to life and renovating. Many wince at the thought of splashing a bit of colour on the walls, intimidated by any hue that ventures beyond the safe confines of the myriad shades of white. Most wouldn’t dare paint them black, but Jane is emboldened by her innate sense of style, nurtured in her childhood home rearranging her mother’s furniture. Coating her house in lashings of inky black inside and out certainly raised eyebrows along the way, until the end result voided any need for explanation. “Most people seem to have to compute that the house is painted black inside and out, then allow themselves to admit that it looks great,” Jane says. Jane’s Black Shack, as she calls it, is perched gloriously atop…

By the time they get around to having baby number three, most mothers can be forgiven for feeling they have parenting pretty much down pat. Sydney graphic designer Martine Vanderspuy confesses that after raising children Kristina and Dan with relative ease, she was totally unprepared for the curve ball that life delivered with the birth of Tom. “I’d managed to stay on top of motherhood and my work as a graphic designer for magazines and advertising agencies,” she recalls. “But it was a completely different story with Tom. From the outset, he couldn’t feed and he had to be fed through a nasal-gastric tube. Then it emerged that his stomach wasn’t processing food properly, so it had to be bypassed, which meant feeding by tube directly into his bowel.” For…

To those lucky enough to call it home, Bangalow is a blissful utopia — high in the rolling hills behind the world-class beaches of Byron Bay, it’s a little enclave of creatives and self-starters encapsulating all that is the good life. Its main street has enough cosy cafes, fashion boutiques and beautifully curated homeware stores to satiate the throngs of day trippers who swell the population every weekend, and its surrounding roads are lined with gorgeous homes of different vintages brimming with lush gardens courtesy of time well spent and the region’s enviably fertile soil. Among them is a dove-grey home with a fire-engine red door and a bull’shead knocker — a hint to visitors that stepping inside is going to be anything but predictable. It’s the creation of Sharon…

When Alex York moved to Springsure in central Queensland and fell in love with an old Queenslander, little did she know that in another time and place, she would be living in it. She recalls arriving as a young nanny in the district, gazing over the fence at the 1882 homestead and dreaming of owning such a house. That was 26 years ago and she had just met her husband-to-be, Jeff, an agronomist who worked across the road from the high Victorian weatherboard house for stock and station agent Primac. “There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then,” Alex says. “Jeff and I married and moved to Moura, and life got pretty hectic as we ended up with five kids under the age of five. When Jeff…

It takes a special gene to be able to successfully pair the classic and the quirky and balance the bold with the understated to create an inspired haven with surprises at every turn. Jodie Mae Ladhams has that gene in spades. In just three years, she’s transformed her character home on Brisbane’s north from “an explosion of peach and avocado with accents of the ’90s” to a sublime sanctuary for her family, including husband, Andrew, their children, Jesse and Sidonie, and three spoiled felines. “We were looking, looking, looking and this house kept showing her face in the searches, but she wasn’t in the area we were looking at,” Jodie recalls. “But, eventually, she said: ‘Oh come on, damn it’, so we went to have a look and the minute…

Splashing around With a swathe of practical, chic finishes and fixtures to choose from, we’ve picked the best of the best for the perfect bathroom space. Pamper zone Make the most of your bathroom experience with these must-have soothing body products. Sleek storage Organisation is key to creating stylish and functional spaces. Fabric features From towels to bathrobes, these accessories will ensure a comfortable bathing experience from start to finish.…