Australian Country Homes Issue 8

Spring is in the air and the warmer weather means we’re all looking forward to spending more time outdoors. Many of the houses featured in this issue have beautiful garden settings and hopefully they will provide design inspiration as well as the impetus to get out and create an oasis of your own. In south-east Queensland, Ipswich’s Toronto is a cute doll’s house dressed in pink and surrounded by manicured hedges and garden beds while Godshill in the Bunya Mountains is a wonderful holiday house enveloped by towering trees of the nearby national park. Over in the West, a couple has put down roots after a lifetime of travel at Guildford in the Swan Valley and created a garden of bright colours and meandering pathways, perfect for quiet reflection. Our…

Made in Tasmania from Merino wool, this gorgeous new Sofia dress is perfect for spring days, when you don’t quite know what the weather’s going to do. smittenmerino.com Merino wool travel wraps are perfect for all seasons. Protect your shoulders from the sun during the day, and remain warm in the night air with this elegant accessory. smittenmerino.com Made from 97 per cent cotton, this Thomas Cook original women’s shirt has a hand-drawn blossom print for style and contains three per cent elastane for comfort and stretch. thomascook.com.au This 121-litre upright free-standing oven is available in eight exciting colours, from retro to modern, so there’s a colour for every kitchen. It features a five-burner cooktop with cast-iron supports and an eight multi-function oven with a triple-glazed oven door. schweigen.com.au This stylish stainless-steel, wall-mounted range…

Peter Allen’s emotive anthem about this beloved land we call home is an apt theme for the life shared by Brisbane couple, Riza and Cam Taylor. “Together we have lived in Malaysia, Tanzania, India, Vietnam and Ethiopia,” Riza, who was born and raised overseas where her father took on different roles for the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, explains. “Cam and I met in Hyderabad, India. I was visiting my family from boarding school in Canberra, and Cam was working with my Dad — scandalous! He was already well-liked by my younger siblings who were living in India with Mum and Dad. I remember Mum telling me he was coming over for dinner and saying he was really nice, to which I replied in the sass only a teenager can manage,…

One of Jules François’ earliest memories is of arriving in Sydney as the eldest of six children of a migrant family and living with her maternal grandparents. While most of the family was Scottish, her grandfather was from Brittany and he introduced a French sensibility to the mix. “As well as me and my siblings there were nine adults in this household and they were all obsessed with food and music,” she recalls. “While they all influenced my upbringing, unquestionably the most important figure in my childhood was my uncle, Harry.” It was Uncle Harry who took Jules to ballet when she started classes at the age of four. The studio was located on top of a pâtisserie and as a post-class treat he would always buy her a palmier biscuit.…

Vanessa Bell is pondering the pink hue of her home. It’s Cameo Pink — not the kind of colour any home could pull off, but it lends her 150-years-plus Gothic cottage, Toronto, a sort of storybook quality, reminiscent of a gingerbread house trimmed with frilly vanilla frosting. The forest green accents tie in neatly with prettily manicured lawns and fragrant garden beds and two conifer pines at the entrance that have intertwined to form a natural archway leading to the front door. It’s all very romantic, the kind of home you’d walk past slowly to sneak peeks through the old windows for glimpses of what life might be like inside. Its distinctive pink is always what first catches the eye. “When my friend first saw the house, she asked me…

Chance has been kind to Paul and Bonnie Atlan. It brought them together in the first place after Bonnie set off for Paris as a young American model in search of success in the City of Lights. She found it, and also added a dashing Parisian to her portfolio. “I was on the metro heading home from a modelling job,” Bonnie recalls. “Suddenly the train came to a halt and all the passengers frantically exited the underground seeking transport on buses or from passing cars. It was a strike, and I was left not knowing how I would get home to my little studio apartment. Buses were jammed, and too scared to ask for a ride, I stood helplessly until I spotted a red motorcycle that had stopped with a young…