Australian Country Homes Issue 6

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 stories…

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 never looked…

Most people yearning for a country life list peace and quiet as a primary objective. For Jen and Geoff Ballard, it was precisely the opposite that attracted them to the village of Hampton on the western side of the Blue Mountains. As the owner of motorcycle parts company Ballard’s Off Road and the driving force behind Australia’s most successful enduro team, Geoff was looking for somewhere he could make as much noise as he liked testing bikes and training for events without disturbing the neighbours. He found what he was looking for at Hampton, a tiny village with a pub and a church and not much more on the road to Jenolan Caves, in 2006. He established a training track and man shed for boys' weekend jaunts to the country. And…

“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 Victoria,…

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 a…

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 decided…