Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 27.4 i Australian Country

AT HOME WITH HISTORY “It’s thanks to that long period of ownership that so much of the house was preserved.” Buying a house was the last thing on Ken Richards’ mind when he visited Tasmania for a holiday in 2014. But as luck would have it, the airline IT industry consultant was passing through the historic village of Evandale on his way to Launceston airport when he noted an old pub that had recently sold for $600,000. “It struck me that you couldn’t buy a shoebox in Sydney for that,” he recalls. “Of course, I went home and that would have been that if Kilgour House hadn’t popped up in my feed.” The mid-to-late 1830s cottage in Longford is an exemplar of a colonial Georgian-style bungalow, with its precise symmetry…

MOVING TO THE COUNTRY Buying a farm had become a running joke. Pieter and Tinne van Beeek had spent almost 30 years living very urban lives in Australia, the first two years in Sydney and then in Melbourne from where Pieter travelled extensively as a mining engineer while Tinne raised their family. They later moved on to jointly run a mergers and acquisitions company. But both had farming backgrounds — Pieter in South Africa and Tinne in Holland — so they always talked about moving to the country. So when Tinne’s sister and her husband were visiting from Holland in 2002, the van Beecks suggested a drive to the Yarra Valley “to look for the farm”. While they didn’t actually find it that day, they did see a real estate…

“Distantly related to the cucumber, cucamelon originates from Mexico and Central America where it’s often called a mouse melon, pepquino or Mexican sour gherkin. Even if you have never grown cucamelons before, chances are you have spotted them on social media. During summer, these thumb-sized, green-striped mini-melons litter my Instagram feed. What’s all the fuss about? Resembling a miniature watermelon, the cucamelon is a mouthful-sized snack full of cucumber flavour with a citrus tang. Distantly related to the cucumber, it originates from Mexico and Central America where it’s often called a mouse melon, pepquino or Mexican sour gherkin. GROWING AND HARVESTING Cucamelons can be grown from seeds easily (seedlings will be hard, if not impossible, to find). Sow the seeds into punnets indoors six weeks before your last frost or…

“We generally made it more contemporary, while still respecting the history.” It would be hard to imagine a less likely backstory than that of South Australian wine industry stalwarts, Richard and Marie Shaw. Richard spent his childhood on his family’s mixed farm at Beaudesert in south-east Queensland. The farm was not big enough to support a family with five sons, and the going got even tougher when floods almost wiped out the entire property in the late-1960s. Richard visited South Australia for a church youth conference and met his future wife on Granite Island near Victor Harbor on the Fleurieu Peninsula. Marie had also grown up on a farm and the couple shared deep Christian beliefs, with almost puritanical convictions about alcohol. “Drinking alcohol, let alone making it, was verging…

GARDEN PROFILE It’s hard to imagine now but, in 1997, when John and Prue Van de Linde bought a 50-acre (20-hectare) run-down former horse stud near Yarra Glen in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, they started with about five trees in a blackberry-infested paddock. These days, Alowyn Gardens is a stunning display garden, divided geometrically into areas devoted to French Provincial plantings, fruit, herbs and vegetables, casuarina and birch forests, a parterre section, a Zen area, a dry garden and a stunning 100-metre-long wisteria arbour. Water features, sculptures and other structures add interest throughout and there’s also a plant nursery and cafe in the grounds. The 10-acre (four-hectare) garden is bordered by John’s ‘legacy project’, an oak forest — still a work in progress — that’s his attempt to highlight the importance…

Productive plants that come up by themselves in the garden are known as volunteers. They grow from seed produced by a previous crop that spread itself in the garden. Not only are they handy but they often perform very well. Cherry tomato, Cape gooseberry, potato, kangaroo apple (a native that comes up in gardens), rocket, lettuce and parsley are all regular volunteers in my garden. I’ve also had delicious fruit from volunteer nectarine trees that have “planted” themselves. In warmer locations, you may be lucky enough to grow a crop of watermelons from seed spitting competitions on the back steps — though a lot of the watermelons we buy nowadays are seedless, putting paid to that bit of backyard fun and potential new plants. Pumpkins regularly grow in compost heaps…

NOVEMBER 16-17 (TAS) Longford Blooms For the forward planners, Longford’s most beautiful private and public gardens will open during this annual open garden festival and rare plant faii Ail open gardens host stalls, offering rare and unusual perennials, bulbs, roses, shrubs, trees and quirky recycled garden art and rustic garden furniture There will be gourmet food vans on the Village Green and numerous cafes, restaurants and pubs in the village will be open. Ail proceeds from ticket sales support two charities, The Helping Hand Longford, and Care For Africa Foundation. facebook.com/Longfordopengardens OCTOBER 4-5 (NSW) Deni Ute Muster Music lovers, families and ute fanatics will descend on Deniliquin for one of Australia’s biggest bucket-list events, the Deni Ute Muster. Each massive day will be headlined by global US sensations Tyler Hubbard…

OUR PLACE IN THE COUNTRY It wasn’t that Mel Welsh didn’t like camping, but after six months spending most weekends in a tent, she was well and truly over the work the preparation and clean up involved. When she and her husband, David, and daughters Matilda, 13, and Libby, 10, bought a 100-acre (40-hectare) property in Western Australia’s Avon Valley, in 2018, they intended to build a homestead straight away. But COVID lockdowns and building delays meant that was not to be, so the family decided to spend their weekends camping on the farm, which is just 2.5 kilometres from their home in the historic village of York on the edge of WA’s Wheatbelt. “Once we were there we absolutely loved it,” Mel explains. “But I pretty quickly discovered one…

ESCAPE ROUTES A SpaceX-like train of headlights beams through the early morning darkness as a convoy of maybe 100 vehicles makes its way from the Red Centre township of Yulara to the sunrise vantage point in Uluru National Park. There’s a quiet determination in the visitors’ demeanour as they arrive in the designated carpark and walk briskly to (ever-so-politely) jostle for a prime position on the elevated viewing platform. Slowly the magic begins as the sun’s first rays peek above the horizon and start to paint Uluru with a pastel wash. This natural spectacle is as close as many visitors to this part of the world will get to a metaphysical experience. It’s an event that’s made more remarkable by the fact that it’s repeated at the other end of…

Perfectly petite pumpkins are a joy to grow and fun to eat — and now is the time to plant them. You’ll find the widest range of mini pumpkins available as heirloom seeds — and in a rainbow of colours and shapes. So why plant baby pumpkins? They typically grow on more compact vines, making them ideal for small gardens. Yielding fruit less than 1kg apiece, they are ideal for small families or singles. These miniature pumpkins can be roasted whole or stuffed and eaten as a single-serve dish. Small pumpkin varieties also reach maturity faster than their bigger cousins and they make beautiful autumnal table decorations. GROWING AND CARE Sow seeds direct in frost-free areas or into small pots if you get late frosts. Seeds will germinate best in…

The COVID pandemic has raised awareness of the need to be more self-sustainable and particularly to have a home-grown supply of fresh edibles. If you have the space and live in a warm climate, growing several different varieties of orange (Citrus × sinensis) keeps the fruit bowl well supplied with vitamin-rich oranges for much of the year. Popular for both juicing and eating, Valencia is a great garden choice as the fruit can be left to hang on the tree from winter to early summer giving a long harvest period. There’s also a seedless variety (Seedless Valencia) for those who don’t enjoy orange pips. Great for eating and long cropping is the Navel orange with its distinctive “bellybutton” base. ‘Washington’ Navel begins to ripen in winter. As a bonus, Navel…