Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2025 i Country Style

I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO STOP THINKING about regenerative farmer Lauren Mathers’ story since I read it (page 50). What has stayed with me is how failure led her to exactly where she was meant to be. It’s a tale of trying and trying again until you find the perfect fit for you. If a job or a course of study isn’t working out or doesn’t feel right, don’t be afraid to change direction, even if it means going backwards to go forwards. Most of us fear failure, but it teaches us so many things – usually that we were not on the right path in the first place. Like everyone, I’ve had my fair share of setbacks. One that stands out is a job that didn’t work out. At…

Subscribe and download our app Download the Country Style app (it’s free!) to read our online stories, or combine it with a digital subscription to get every issue. Our digital magazines are as beautiful as print, plus you can customise font sizes and listen to an audio version. On Instagram The wisteria that drapes over this historic home in Lithgow, NSW, is owner Meg’s favourite feature – and was a big hit on our Instagram, too. Read all about it at homestolove.com.au On the App Store Country Style magazine NEWSLETTERS homestolove.com.au/country-style Get updates straight to your inbox with Country Style newsletters. They’re filled with sneak peeks. Scan the code, right, to sign up. PHOTOGRAPHY MICHAEL WEE…

EVERYTHING IS BIGGER in Texas: big hats, big hair, big skies, big belt buckles and big accents. But in this sleepy Australian town – some 13,000 kilometres away from its American namesake – with a population of 900, it is the big-hearted people that make Texas great. So says Grace Cheatley, the 30-year-old who now calls Texas – located on the border of New South Wales and Queensland and famed for its fishing, the country’s last-standing rabbit-freezing works, and one of Australia’s largest feedlots – home. It’s a far cry from Grace’s childhood by the ocean and career trajectory in Melbourne. “Sometimes I think, ‘How on earth did I get here?’ But life never ends up how you think it’s going to end up,” Grace says from Hopewood, the 2630-hectare…

GROWING UP IN SYDNEY’S SUTHERLAND SHIRE near Royal National Park, Lisa van den Dolder recalls an adventurous childhood exploring bushland at the end of her road, building cubbies and always returning home with a special branch or feather. Decades on, following a stint living in London and extensive travel abroad, her Wentworth Falls home in the Blue Mountains, NSW, offers a similar closeness to nature. “You breathe in the smell of the eucalyptus and pine trees, you’re not trying to hassle for a parking spot; it’s slower and quieter,” says Lisa, 56. Before their move, she and her husband Mark, 59, wanted to escape the hustle and bustle while working as primary school teachers in the city’s west. With the Blue Mountains a commutable distance – around an hour and…

BRENDA AND BRETT AINSWORTH have seen both the good and the bad sides of living in the bush. In 2013, they lost their home in the NSW Blue Mountains town of Winmalee to bushfire, which led them to explore a sea change in Sydney’s idyllic Cronulla. But they couldn’t stay away forever. “In 2020, our daughter Hannah was married in Blackheath, and the love and the pull of the mountains got us excited to look for a new property,” says Brenda, 62. “We found Bryn Mawr in Mount Wilson and fell in love with it.” The 14.5-hectare property, on the traditional lands of the Gundungurra and Darug people, is set in World Heritage-listed rainforest, with over four hectares devoted to the homestead and its sprawling gardens. “The garden was beautiful…

I HAVE HAD A LIFELONG love affair with stout, porter, dark and black beers. These beverages are the result of long-roasting barley, which releases a carnival flavour-wheel of intriguing tastes that wouldn’t be out of place in a 19th-century curiosity cabinet. When compared to lethargic lagers, perfunctory pilsners, boorish bitters, apathetic ales and indifferent IPAs, dark is, in my opinion, delightful. I say ‘had’ because I no longer imbibe, so imagine my surprise when I encountered alcohol-free Guinness stout while travelling in England. I reckon it’s the best non-alcoholic beer available. However, this month’s recipe calls for the original version. Everyone is probably well acquainted with Beef and Guinness Pie – that cornerstone of every ersatz Irish-themed pub throughout the Western Hemisphere. But have you ever thought of combining them…

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GOING INTO BUSINESS with your mother-in-law is a concept that would make many people run for the hills. But for Sahra Dixon, 35, and Trisha Dixon, 70, it was a natural fit. In 2020, when Sahra’s husband Hamish, 41, felt his Cooma country childhood calling him back to the land, the couple – then parents to two-year-old Ali and pregnant with their second child – left Sydney and headed south, settling in Burragate, just under two hours’ drive from Trisha’s sheep and cattle property just outside Cooma. It was there on the banks of the Towamba River that Sahra’s existing love of local produce and good food took root in her own backyard. “I had a small terrace garden in Sydney – it was tiny in comparison to the two…

HELLO, WINTER GARDENERS. June on the South Coast of NSW is pretty gentle relative to winters in the rest of the world. I wonder what it’s like at your place? Here, the ground has cooled down, the manic weed growth has finally slowed and the cooler, damper conditions mean the advent of a happy little friend – the mushroom. I adore mushrooms. I love the pretty red-capped, spotted mushroom of childhood fairytales. I love tasty woody orange chanterelles from the pine forest floor. I love Swiss browns on pizza, shiitake in my soup, and white common button mushrooms cooked with herbs and garlic and served on sourdough toast at any time of day. Mushrooms are “bussin”, one of my teenagers says, while the other two scrape them off their plates.…

‘CHOCOLATE’ AND ‘PUDDING’ WOULD, I think, have to be among two of the most marvellous words in the English language (along with ‘tea’ and ‘cake’) and when combined, well, they really do produce a dish far greater even than the sum of its parts. As the weather cools and in anticipation of proper winter weather, we make space in our wardrobes for extra layers – scarves, woollen jumpers, and elastic-waisted pants (just me?). There is nothing finer than rounding out a meal with a warm, chocolatey pud. Make it one that is both gooey and indulgent, with bright pops of tart, fresh raspberry and you definitely have a crowd-pleaser. This is that pudding. A crackly, cakey top giving way to a gloriously soft centre. Raspberries provide a welcome fruity foil…

MOUNT MULLIGAN LODGE MOUNT MULLIGAN, QLD IF THERE’S A MORE GLAMOROUS way of approaching your hotel than a helicopter ride, I don’t know it. The 35-minute hop from Cairns to Mount Mulligan Lodge is a thrilling spin over Australia’s most iconic landscapes, from tropical reef, through rainforest, to the outback. As the lush Atherton Tablelands thin out into the open eucalypt forest that heralds the outback, the pilot points out Mount Mulligan, or Ngarrabullgan, a looming sandstone mass stretching 18 kilometres, then swoops in below it to circle the lodge, with its green gardens and weir. It’s a spectacular entrance to a spectacular place. Reminiscent of a safari camp, Mount Mulligan Lodge centres around a main pavilion of rustic timber and stone that looks out onto an infinity pool and…

MELALEUCA Angie Faye Martin, HQ , $34.99 A debut novel. Martin’s central character is Detective Renee Taylor. Although her father belonged to an independent Indigenous community, her mother took her away, believing she would have a better life within a white society. Renee has returned to the small town in Queensland where she grew up to keep an eye on her frail mother. A promising career in Brisbane had to be put on hold. When a walker finds the body of a young girl bashed to death with a rock, the local drug baron, ‘Worm’, with a history of luring youngsters to a fate worse than death, is a likely suspect. However, Renee’s insufferable boss seems unwilling to inconvenience Worm in any way. And that goes for everyone she questions.…

REST AND REWARD Amidst the joyful chaos of my three little ones, I long for slow mornings. Saturdays are for sport and fridge restocking. Sundays bring pancakes and church. But Monday is mine: a late breakfast after drop-offs, a hot long black, and a chocolate croissant. I cherish reading my Country Style, a link to pre-motherhood quiet. Talking Point in the April issue moved me, echoing my friends’ frustration with endless specialist waiting lists for their children. I’m grateful for passionate people like Rebecca Keeley, who truly listens to children and envisions a better health system. Now, my slow morning ends, and my to-do list beckons. I’m thankful for this small Monday ritual and the company of my magazine. India May, Silvan, Vic BLAST FROM THE PAST Wow! Last Sunday,…

WHEN INTERIOR DESIGNER KATE HARDY and her consultant husband Andrew, both in their 50s, decided to invest in a country home in 2021, there was no doubt in their minds where that home should be. “Our list of must-haves was fairly limited because we really wanted a home in Exeter, and there’s a finite number of properties here,” says Kate. “We wanted that village feel that you don’t get in bigger towns.” Like many families during COVID, Kate and Andrew, along with their adult children Beatrice, 22, and Will, 19, realised something was missing from their lives in Sydney. “I’m from a small hamlet in North Yorkshire and it was during COVID, when we couldn’t travel, that we missed seeing our family and being part of rural life,” recalls Kate.…

CRISPY PORK BELLY WITH NATIVE CITRUS CARAMEL Serves 4-6 1.2kg pork belly, off the bone 2 tablespoons salt flakes NATIVE CITRUS CARAMEL 4 coriander roots, scraped 6cm piece of native ginger, roughly chopped 2cm piece of fresh turmeric, roughly chopped, or ½ teaspoon ground turmeric 4 tablespoons macadamia oil 100g light palm sugar 400ml orange juice 1 lemongrass stalk, thinly sliced 4–6 anise myrtle leaves 3 lemon myrtle leaves 4 teaspoons Geraldton wax 100ml lime juice Pulp of 8 finger limes Remove the pork from its packaging and dry thoroughly with paper towel. Score the skin of the pork and, for best results, allow it to dry, uncovered, in the fridge overnight. When you’re ready to cook the pork, preheat the oven to 220°C fan-forced. Season the pork belly generously…

AS WE HEAD TOWARDS THE COOLER MONTHS (certainly here in Orange), I shift a gear with both the food I cook and the wines I pour. Salads and seafood move to braises, curries and stews. Rieslings, rosés and pinots give way to bolder, brasher reds. Chardonnay remains a constant, as it’s my wife’s favourite grape. Shiraz and cabernets are the backbone of our traditional reds, but increasingly I find my hand is drawn to bottles of lesser-known varieties that are lithe, spicy and highly slurpable. These are not profound wines like the icons from Henschke, Penfolds, Bass Phillip or Moss Wood. They are upfront, frisky and friendly. Maybe (after 50 years in the job) I’m restless and seek out new pleasures to build on the conventional cornerstones of my wine-tasting…

FALLS-ING IN LOVE Crocodile Dundee is having a(nother) moment – a remastered version and an accompanying doco, Love of an Icon: the Legend of Crocodile Dundee, are currently in cinemas. And Kakadu National Park’s Gunlom Falls, which starred in the film as Echo Lake, where Mick Dundee caught and barbecued a barra for Linda, is about to reopen for the dry season, complete with new walkways. The falls are only an hour’s drive (4WD) from Cooinda Lodge, which has just upgraded its glamping tents. Get booking! Visit kakadutourism.com pretty in paisley Oroton’s cotton scarf, $59, is a versatile little thing: tied around your neck, over your hair or onto a handbag, it adds a jaunty splash of colour to your day. Your best night-time friend when travelling is a silk…

IN LATE MARCH, when the colour deepened to wine-red on the tops of the claret ash, when the nets came off the vines and the vineyards were busy with pickers, when the mist hung in the lightest shroud over the river, when the rain came and the grass turned green, when my kitchen was groaning under the weight of fat tomatoes, and when I was thinking I needed to pull the straggling cucumbers out and dig in a sprinkling of sheep manure ready to plant the early garlic in April, when the days were shortening and the quinces ripening, it was time to make blackberry jam. All summer I’d made little pots of strawberry jam from our patch in the vegie garden, but The Farmer has a love affair with…