Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue #23.2 March/April 2020 i Australian Country

Tania and Kieth Norman are living proof of the old adage that you never know what’s around the corner. In 2017, after 28 years of marriage and raising their family in Adelaide, the couple made the decision to move to Kieth’s home city of Perth. But then they took a Sunday drive ... “I grew up on a farm at Lake Hindmarsh in western Victoria,” Tania takes up the story. “After school, I travelled around Australia with a girlfriend and I met Kieth when he was driving big-haul Cats in the Pilbara. We married and moved to Adelaide because that was mid-way between our two family homes. But Kieth always wanted to move back to Perth and, eventually, as we were scaling back our work lives, I agreed.” As fate…

Doug Beattie appears remarkably casual about security at his historic home in the southern Queensland regional town of Roma. “I don’t worry much about it,” he admits. “No one would break in anyhow as most locals think the place is haunted.” Ghosts or not, there are plenty of reminders of the past in the grand old dame of a Queenslander, which Doug admits he has been DIY restoring in his every spare minute since he bought the property 14 years ago. The garden, he adds, is like an archaeological dig as every time he plants a shovel, coins, china fragments or old bottles are unearthed. “When my son Harry, and his mates used to play here as children they were constantly finding treasure,” Doug says. “At one stage they dug…

It may be hard to believe today, but when Christina Kennedy and her publishing executive husband, Trevor, decided to build on Horse Island in Tuross Lake on the NSW coast in 1994, they started with an unfenced, 200-acre (80-hectare) paddock. It wasn’t exactly bare, as scrubby bush and black wattle that had sprung up following a fire dominated the landscape. There were also remnant kurrajongs, stands of old southern mahogany, forest red gum and ironbark shading the open spaces. Casuarinas lined the foreshores and subtropical rainforest surrounded by spotted gums filled the central valley. Grazing cattle had degraded the water’s edge and, along with a large population of kangaroos, kept the grasslands semi under control. Weeds, however, were rife. Christina’s family had a long history with Horse Island when she…

thursday is pool comp night at Sam Hardinge and Casey Palczewski’s New Apple Bar restaurant in the Blue Mountains’ village of Bilpin. It’s rare that anyone actually picks up a cue, let alone plays pool, and the menu is limited to a routier-style, no-option chicken and chips. Mind you, it’s the best chicken and chips you will ever taste. The free-range organic chicken and hand-cut potatoes are roasted in the wood-fired oven that’s at the core of the apple-growing country restaurant and both are sourced from the neighbouring Bilpin Springs Farm. Bilpin Springs is better known as the larder for Sydney’s Bondi Beach dining institution, Sean’s Panaroma, owned by Sean Moran and his husband, Michael (Manoo) Robertson, who are Sam and Casey’s partners at New Apple Bar. For the rest…

You had to be tough to survive the Melbourne trading floor of the Australian Stock Exchange in the rough and tumble of the greed-is-good 1980s. Melbourne florist Cherrie Mirikilis Pavlou says she learned her work ethic there, when as a youngster she found herself in a male-dominated, cut-throat environment. “Fortunately, I had a handful of strong female role models,” she recalls. “But I discovered early on that hard work doesn’t kill you and if you do enough of it, anything will go well.” Cherrie grew up helping out in the fruit and vegie shop her parents, Con and Marika, ran on Brunswick Street in what was then the Bohemian suburb of Fitzroy. Their business was as much a drop-in centre as a place to buy apples and carrots, and she…

Claire Millar candidly confesses she thought she was moving to the sticks when she and her newly minted husband, Frank, arrived at Wharparilla station near the border town of Echuca on the Victorian side of the Murray River. The year was 1957 and though the century-old homestead proportions were grand, it lacked amenities Claire took for granted in her home town of Shepparton. “It may have been only a few kilometres from Echuca, but it felt like 100 miles,” she recalls. “We had no mains power so we had kerosene fridges and a wood-fired slow-combustion stove. We had to fire up a donkey for hot water and ran a generator at night for lights. We mightn’t have had any mod cons but it was a wonderful place to bring up…

Thanks for being in touch. We welcome your feedback. We appreciate your thoughts and in each issue, one correspondent wins a prize. Simply email Kirsty at kmckenzie@umco.com. au or write to us at Australian Country, Locked Bag 154, North Ryde NSW 1670. We reserve the right to edit lengthy letters before publication. Our favourite correspondent next issue will win a set of Magic cleaning products that will make all sorts of surfaces look like new and remove just about any conceivable stain. Just send us your thoughts on the magazine and its stories to be in the running to win this wonderful prize.…

MAY 3 (QLD) AUTUMN RACE DAY Ballendean Estate winery will host Rotary Stanthorpe’s annual fundraiser, with all the fun and frivolity of a horse racing carnival minus the actual horse races. Highlights will include a long lunch in the Barrelroom restaurant, raffles, entertainment by local artists, a fashions on the field competition and alternative races and there will be a shuttle bus from town to the venue. trybooking.com/BHHDT APRIL 25-MAY 10 (WA) MARGARET RIVER OPEN STUDIOS More than 110 artists will open their studios to showcase the talents of the painters, sculptors, photographers, jewellers, glassblowers, textile and mixed-media artists of this beautiful region of the south-west corner of Western Australia. mrropenstudios.com.au APRIL 4 (NSW) TWILIGHT PICNIC FAIR Bring your family and friends along to historic Cooma Cottage, one-time home of…

They say there’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity, so it’s little wonder Nicola and Carl Mason raised a few eyebrows when they upped stakes 20 years ago and moved from Perth to Hobart. They’d never even visited the island state, they had no jobs and two daughters, Holly, aged seven at the time, and Brooke, five, to support plus son Daniel on the way. But the lure of four distinct seasons, the prospect of living in a mini version of England where both were born and a full menu of outdoor adventure opportunities persuaded them to leave behind family and friends, all that was familiar and a successful recycled furniture business. However, they were young, resourceful and resilient and found their feet relatively easily with their new life…

A deep connection to the land has always informed the work of Canberra chef Janet Jeffs and her partner, artist Leanne Crisp. Ballalaba, their farm in the upper reaches of the Shoalhaven River in the NSW south-western slopes, allows them to take their endeavours to new heights. Although they both grew up in Adelaide and studied art there (briefly in Janet’s case), the couple lived in parallel worlds until fate brought them together a decade ago. “I married at 21 and came to Canberra in 1975, where I raised my family,” Leeanne says. “Janet was on the edge of my circle of friends so I was always aware of her, even as early as the ’90s. Our relationship developed from that friendship and I moved to Ballalaba about six years…

We again embrace the wonderful diversity of the Australian countryside with stories from the coast to the outback. We start in the McLaren Vale region of South Australia where we visit Bec Hardy at her home and vineyard, Tipsy Hill, and Jane Campbell at the home she has renovated at Strathalbyn. We head to historic Nithsdale homestead near Braidwood in the upper reaches of the Shoalhaven River and then continue our series on the regions affected by the summer bushfires by visiting the south coast of NSW and the towns of Milton, Ulladulla, Bawley Point and Mollymook, which will be hosting the second annual StoryFest in June. We head on down to Benalla in Victoria, where Julie and Gary Campbell have dedicated many years to their Birchwood garden, which they…