Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 9 i Australian Country Homes

As the year draws to a close, we’d like to acknowledge your continued support and feedback on the stories we feature in the magazine. Thanks to your interest, in future issues we’ll be incorporating increased content about traditional homes and the process of restoring them. While Australia’s European history is relatively short, we have a remarkable repository of historic houses and homesteads. Many correspondents have suggested they would like to hear more about them and the journey their owners have taken to restore them to their original condition, or at least, a reflection of their past lives. In this issue we feature a historic manse in the Queensland city of Ipswich, a traditional home on acreage in the wine country near Mudgee in NSW and a heritage-listed property on the…

Andrea and Peter Ferrando never know who might knock on their front door. Their home has stood since 1883, built as a manse for the Central Congregational Church during the pioneering days of Ipswich. It has sheltered scores of people in its time, some who can’t help opening the rustic front gate to take a trip down memory lane. “We had a man who was in his 90s visit us, and he had lived in the home in the 1930s as a young boy,” says Andrea of one particularly memorable guest. “In fact, he and his family were the last to live in the building as a manse. His dad was a pastor and after his family left, the house was turned into flats.” The old man’s visit soon turned…

Lisa Post can trace her love of restoration and renovation back to her school days in her home country, England. Inspired by the transformation of some chairs her parents inherited and then restored, at the age of 15 she signed up for wood working classes. Her teacher helped her build the frame, she sourced the upholstery fabric from a John Lewis sale and earned herself an A-grade result as well as a crash course in the rewards of DIY. It was the start of a long career as a fixer upper, and now Lisa and her husband, Nathan, have recently completed a massive renovation on their cottage on a farm near Armidale in the New South Wales New England Tablelands. Lisa is also in the process of turning her hobby…

Michelle Roper was a city girl when she met Kris Kahler — a rising football star who was drafted by the Brisbane Broncos as a teenager. Marrying him meant living life on the move, as they traded a brief stay in Canberra where Kris played for the Raiders for the more temperate climes of the Gold Coast when Kris signed up to be on the inaugural Titans squad. Then there were stints in France and England. “We moved to Gateshead in the UK when the season in France ended,” Michelle recalls. “Kris played for the football team Gateshead Thunder. It was the first day of summer the day we arrived and it was like our winters over here. I was super sad.” The sun did come out in time of…

Katherine Sabbath Images and text from Bake Australia Great by Katherine Sabbath, Murdoch Books, $39.99. What are your pantry staples? I am addicted to couverture dark chocolate (70 per cent or above) and eat through one or two blocks per week, self-raising cake flour, dark brown sugar, vanilla bean paste, mixed nuts. What is your favourite cheat/shortcut? I always use carton, free-range pasteurised egg whites for my Swiss meringue buttercream, which saves me mess and time spent pasteurising egg whites over the stove. What are your top three tips for bakers? Bake with ingredients you enjoy eating, make more than what you need and freeze leftovers (especially mud cakes and high-fat buttercreams or frostings) and, as always, remember that PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. Which utensil or appliance can you not live…

Toast the moment with Bubbelini, $32, a premium Australian sparkling wine made using the méthode traditionelle and characterised by exceptional balance and a fruity and elegant finish. bubbelini.com The Women’s Lucinda Wonder Jean shorts, $99.95, offer comfort and style in one cute package. They’re designed with a no-gap elastic waistband and the Wonder Jean fit with clever seams to sculpt and lift the bottom. thomascook.com.au This 100 per cent Merino lightweight French-striped poncho, $179, is great for travel, and one size fits all. It can be worn in cool climates for warmth, and in hotter places for sun protection of shoulders and decolletage. Lots of colours available. smittenmerino.com Filled with Coco & Bean’s premium artisan-made treats including award-winning Belgian chocolate brownies, French macarons, rocky road, biscotti, rum balls, chocolate cookies,…

There are not very many two-year-olds who receive a deck for their birthday. But for little Bonnie Cooknell, the extension to her caravan cubby house was the realisation of her wildest dreams, particularly as it came with a slippery slide, a telescope and a steering wheel to make playing there even more imaginative. Mind you, by most accounts, Bonnie is a lucky little girl. She lives with her parents, Alicia and Ian, on a hilltop acreage on Melbourne’s periphery. She has all the freedoms of country life, plenty of space to play, and Ralph the dog and ISA Brown hens Sally, Kelly and Natalie to entertain her. She’ll have the good fortune of going to the local primary school and the privilege of growing up in a strong community, all…

The old saying that every cloud has a silver lining proved true for Frieda and John Smith. John’s health had been deteriorating for months when the couple decided to take a holiday at Noosa on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. They fell completely under the spell of the resort town’s benign climate, laid-back lifestyle, proximity to the beach and relative lack of traffic compared to their home in inner Sydney. “We went back to Sydney, put our house on the market and bought up here,” Frieda recalls of that fateful holiday in 1997. “Just as well we did because shortly after the move, we also found a doctor who was able to set John on the path to recovery. It wasn’t as if we hated our Sydney life, as we had a…

There is much to love about the Tweed Valley town of Murwillumbah. It sits pretty on the verdant banks of the Tweed River in far northern New South Wales — just big enough to entice weekenders for a wander through its streets, and just small enough to be the kind of town where everyone knows, or knows of, everyone else. Rolling hills and rustling fields of sugarcane surround its quaint commercial hub, home to some of the country’s most lovely art deco buildings. The town was a thriving agricultural centre when fire ripped through it in 1907, and what rose from the ashes at the hands of resilient locals is a time capsule of Australia’s offering to the deco period that captivated the architecture world in the early 1900s. On…