Country Style June 2021

Winter is my least favourite season but this year, for the first time, I have strangely been looking forward to it. Which made me wonder why. Restrictions were in place last winter, we couldn’t leave Sydney for most of it and we couldn’t do the annual ‘wintery’ activities that make winter, well, winter. We usually descend on the nearest pub with a fireplace for a meal, a group of families head to our friends’ property in Bilpin for a weekend, my husband and I enjoy a break in the Southern Highlands, and we take the kids skiing. In 2020, none of that was possible or was too difficult with the pandemic, so it makes sense I am looking forward to making up for lost time and doing things that make…

SUE STUBBS A keen photographer since the age of eight, Sue shot our garden story on page 82, in the grounds of St Patricks Catholic Church in Rockley, NSW. Of growing up on a smallholding outside Melbourne, Sue says, “I loved the freedom and endless horizons, the horses and the smell of grass hay. We had chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, horses and a veggie garden and two gates to open before you got to the house paddock. I still don’t like opening gates.” Now she lives in a former postmistress’s house on Sydney’s outskirts, with Skittles the border collie, Willow the greyhound, and two ginger rescue cats, Gimli and Squeak (who was found in the garden by Skittles as a wild kitten and has since become “a princess who looks a little…

MYSTERY SOLVED I, like many others, enjoy receiving my Country Style magazine in the mail. We have a PO Box in town, so my husband usually collects the mail and brings it home at the end of his working day. It’s always been sealed in plastic for protection, but over the past few months, it’s been opened by the time I receive it. At breakfast this morning, my husband laughed and said, “Have you read Full House [from the May issue], Rob Ingram’s page? Let me read it to you!” We both had a laugh, then he said, “I can’t wait to read them, I enjoy Rob’s sense of humour.” Then, he asked if I had read the April article. Love it and thank you, I think my future subscriptions will continue. Barbara…

Congratulations to all our readers who have had their letter printed! You will each receive a Biologi Bf Restore Face & Body Serum, $72 for 50ml. The Biologi Bf Restore Serum is a pure plant extract of the Australian finger lime. For more information, visit biologi.com.au Share your thoughts and experiences with us by writing to Country Style, PO Box 4088, Sydney, NSW, 1028, or emailing austcountrystyle@aremedia.com.au. Please include your address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space and clarity.…

IT’S WINTER’S EVE. The days are drawing in and the drying leaves rattle and shiver on the poplars like wind chimes. Here at the bottom of Australia the days get short quickly, but even though June is the official start of winter I’ve learned not to look to the calendar to understand when the seasons start and finish. Instead I know the silver birches lose their leaves first, then the poplars and the two massive mulberry trees. The liquidambar and the grapevine will flame red, the wisteria will yellow but it’s only when the oak’s bare branches are lit with a thousand candles by the setting sun that I know winter has arrived. Winter’s eve brings with it a sense of anticipation. The world gets quieter. There’s no whirr of insect…

STEPHANIE SCHMIDT’S postnatal depression five years ago surprised no one more than her. As a clinical psychologist, the South Australian farmer thought she’d recognise the signs and symptoms better than most – but at the time, the rabbit hole was dark and deep and it wasn’t until others pointed it out that she realised she needed help. “As much as I know all the signs when I see it in someone else, I was so far into it that I couldn’t see it for myself,” says Steph, 33. “My husband Simon was working very long hours; as we farm marginal country, he works very hard in good years to make up the rest of the time. So I was quite isolated, with not a lot of support.” Things started to spiral downwards…