Innholdsfortegnelse for Spaces Volume 4 i Spaces Volume 4

The house Laurie Melia and her husband, Rod Flynn, live in is on top of a hill. “All the windows are above the fence line,” she says. “We can see right to the bottom of our street from the kitchen.” That’s just one of the things they love about their place in Bassendean, on the outskirts of Perth. The fact that the two of them, along with their dog, Duke (who does an excellent job as a security guard and excavator), have more than enough room to do all the things they want to do is another bonus. Over the past four years, Laurie and Rod have been in the process of making the three-bedroom cottage completely theirs. It has a picket fence and all the usual features you’d expect…

Candice Carlin and Murray Cronin never officially decided to move in together. Having grown up in the same small New South Wales town of Nelson Bay, they started dating while still living with their respective folks, then began sharing digs while overseas on a year-long adventure in the UK. When they came back to Australia in 2012 and Murray landed a teaching job in rural Tasmania, giving island life a go together seemed like a no-brainer. Plus, they were offered teachers’ housing, and later moved to the cheap rent utopia that is Launceston. Says Candice: “You’d go to an inspection and be the only one there. They’d say, ‘Do you want it?’ And you’d be like, ‘Um… yeah!’” Buying in Tassie was a different story altogether, however. Murray had been…

Country kids Eileen Braybrook and Stefan Delatovic’s big move to the city quite literally started with a bang. A week after driving the 840 kilometres south from Broken Hill to Melbourne, they awoke to a thunderous crash that shook their entire apartment. Turns out a car had ploughed through a bus stop into their front door, then fled the scene. “The front door is the only way in and it was completely jammed,” Eileen says. “The fire department had to come and axe the door down so we could get out.” Adds Stefan: “We were like, ‘Everyone said the city was really hardcore and it’s true!’” Jokes aside, the couple actually was pretty nervy about the switch to city living. They both grew up in Broken Hill, a mining town…

Bikkies. Free ones. That’s what sold Emma Byrnes and her husband, Pete Barrett, on a house just near Melbourne’s Merri Creek. “They were giving them out at the inspection,” she says, “and we immediately thought, ‘This place is so cosy and loving and just real.’” Of course, it wasn’t just the yummy treats that inspired the couple to turn up on auction day. There was also the fact that the house was located in Fitzroy North. “Pete’s a real urbanite, while I could live in the country or the seaside,” Emma says. “This felt like a really good compromise, because it’s tucked away among all the gumtrees and the creek is right behind us. So this has been our little urban oasis where we get access to all the good…

In a quiet corner of Brunswick, Steph Hughes and Mia Mala McDonald are creating their first family home. When Steph moved in seven years ago, it was a share house for four. “I was in my mid-20s, looking for a place to live, and it was the cheapest, cheeriest house I could find,” she says. “We were all old, old friends and there was a lot of revelry.” Over the years, friends of friends have moved in and out of the sprawling house, leaving behind typical share-house debris: miscellaneous tents, flotsam bits of mail, and the occasional mysterious wall stain. One by one, flatmates moved on and, a couple of years ago, Steph’s partner, Mia, moved in. “At that point there was hardly anything here,” Steph says. “We had gotten…

Chance plays a part in everyone’s lives, including Josh Barnes’. He’d headed up to the Blue Mountains from Sydney a few years ago, and bumped into a friend who asked if he could look after his house for a while. It sounded like a good idea, especially as his love life in the city was a disaster at the time. While Josh was house-sitting, he wandered past a real estate agency and noticed an ad, low down in the window. ‘Studio in Nature’, it read. He’d been trying to set up a co-op outside the city with a few people, but the idea hadn’t taken off; the studio, which he could buy on his own, seemed a better option. It was, for a number of reasons, not least of which…

Katia Carletti and Rohan Fraser describe their suburban Adelaide rental as a “rambling mess”. They can’t shut their side gate because the cedar tree’s grown wild under the house, skewing the pavers. And their bath is a no-go zone – Rohan used it just once and flooded the dining room. “That’s because the fig tree is clogging the pipes,” Katia says. Still, over the past four years, the couple has managed to spend almost nothing on a series of small changes that have transformed the place into a comfortable home and shared art studio, packed with Rohan’s paintings, Katia’s handmade pottery and a mix of thrifted and found furniture. Katia and Rohan met in 2009 at Adelaide Central School of Art and later lived together for a year in a…

Like lots of other people, Tina Helm and Alex Bennett had some fairly clear but pretty ambitious ideas of what they wanted to do with their lives. She wanted to run a bed and breakfast and perhaps a café; he wanted to set up a recording studio. They were thinking they might do this in New Zealand, where they were both living at the time. Tina’s a Kiwi and Alex had been over there for a few years studying and working in the music studios at Auckland University – but was “ready to get out there and do it rather than be stuck in an institution”. It suddenly clicked, he says, “that my parents had this building with a b&b and space for a studio” back in Australia. Alex and…

The best thing about Jae-sun You’s apartment, he reckons, is the view. “It’s on top of a hill, and looks out over the mountains and the Seoul Tower.” He’s been there for eight or nine years and, at first, didn’t think he needed too much else. When he and J, his Chinchilla Persian cat, moved in, he was determined to leave the place bare. Jae-sun’s life in his five-year-old shop revolves around a hotchpotch of stuff, and he wanted home life to be the opposite. “My home was only for rest – I don’t cook or do any special home things there. My friends don’t visit. Only necessary things were allowed there.” It didn’t take long to ditch the minimal look, and for vintage bits and bobs to sneak into…

Jordan Marzuki specialises in the odd and unexpected in his slightly deranged label, The Balletcats – tote bags and sweatshirts with illustrations of dissected cats, rifle-wielding moggies, and felines wearing human stoles; an action figure of a boy, ribs exposed, with a cat down his shorts. It seems just right, then, that every now and then a giant lizard slithers through the house he shares with his architect father, Pris, and three cats. Or that there’s an occasional visit from “some kind of stinky animal – what’s it called, a skunk. We’re sitting on the edge of a swamp and have almost everything here in the way of wildlife”. The Marzuki family had been living on the outskirts of Jakarta for 15 years before knocking down their house and building…

When you’ve been living in the back of a troop carrier for three months with two bikes and a dog, even the smallest apartment can seem like the Taj Mahal. That was the case when Rick Hayward and Emily Devers returned to Brisbane after an extended East Coast road trip and inspected a very modest one-room studio in Red Hill. The woman who owned the house, and lived upstairs, was an illustrator, and the studio used to be her workspace. They decided it was the perfect place at the perfect time, and put their case forward to become the new tenants. “We were a bit nervous, though, because she was a self-proclaimed cat person and we have a dog,” says Rick, referring to their third family member, Peter Allen, the…

When Abbey Rich was 16 years old, she hatched a plan to move from the family home in Frankston, on the edge of Melbourne, to the city’s inner-northern suburbs. “I like Frankston, but I always felt like I was on the outside looking in,” she says. As a budding artist, Abbey wanted to live on her own, but be surrounded by other creative people. Determined to make it happen, she worked full-time at a supermarket and “saved like crazy”. At 19, she packed up her things and moved to a one-bedroom unit on a quiet side street in Brunswick West, the place she now calls home. “The property wasn’t listed anywhere,” Abbey says. “I didn’t exactly know what I was doing, so went to the real estate agent and asked…

The residents of a street in Sydney’s Camperdown are proof that the city can still offer that small town vibe, where neighbours rely on each other for much more than a cup of sugar. Eight years ago, Tess and Heath were the first of this gang to move into the street, getting buddy-buddy with their landlord Barry so they could recommend potential tenants whenever another house became available. The result is a community of various housemate combinations, ages, professions and dogs, with a common interest of creating not just a home, but a neighbourhood. NUMBER 53 // CASSIE STEEL WRITER Tess never thought I would agree to being next-door neighbours. Although the potential intensity of two good friends living side by side did cross my mind, my partner Majid and…

Furniture gets handed on to friends. Clothes and books and other things do as well. It’s not too often, though, that a whole house gets passed around, but Kyra Bartley and David Collins’ place is such a beauty that, for the past 15 years or so, no one’s wanted to let go of it completely. “A friend of ours was living here, but when he headed over to London, he tapped me on the shoulder and told me the warehouse was coming up,” says animator Kyra Bartley. She and David, a photographer, hadn’t been long back from working in Cambodia and were looking to move out of their “crappy little terrace house” into something more interesting. “Before our friend lived here, another friend had it,” she says. “It’s so good,…

From the street, Dawn and Andrew Lindsay’s bayside Melbourne home doesn’t look all that different from its neighbours: a brick and timber-clad affair with a modest front lawn sliced by a two-track concrete driveway. Certain things, though, do suggest something a bit special might be hiding within. The place is painted pastel yellow, for example, punctuated by a cherry red front door. An impressive cactus collection lines the side fence. And, should you roll up the garage door, you’ll find a mint condition ’69 Ford Ranch Wagon nestled beside the bones of an under-construction hot rod. Turns out the Lindsays are obsessed with American mid-century modern style and, over the past two decades, have kitted out their 1948 three-bedroom home with treasures fossicked from that era. “We’ve both been heavily…

“When you think about it, we are fluid museums. We hold experiences and memories, and covet objects that remind us of who we are, or were, and what we admire,” says Patrick Floyd Meade. “Not to get too hippy about it, but there is a vibe or energy around certain objects or pieces of furniture. It’s nice to think about being a custodian of these things for a little while, not quite knowing where they’ve been, or maybe where they’ll end up.” Paddy is a collector who loves the neglected, which is all part of his “nostalgic heart”, he says. He lives in Melbourne during the week, but found a dilapidated two-storey house on Victoria’s Gippsland coast to transform into a retreat studded with salvaged wares. “It might look a…

Usually, when a couple starts thinking about going into business together, they’re given a piece of unsolicited advice: don’t. But for the four romantic and professional duos in Melbourne’s Nicholson Street Studios – who make up eight of the 10 occupants – things just seem to work. Perhaps it has something to do with the space. Set up by Hilary Walker and her husband Benjamin Baldwin, the large, open-plan office somehow channels the right mix of calm and creativity. The best evidence that it all works? The single tenants don’t even seem to mind being outnumbered. HILARY WALKER // PHOTOGRAPHER & STUDIO OWNER Ben and I were looking for a space we could live in, where he could also set up a workshop for his woodwork. I had to be…

The concept of home can be a tad complicated when your roots are firmly entwined within two wildly different cultures. Take Nataly Lee, who grew up in Wellington and then Brisbane, but was born in Cambodia. In 1984, when Nataly was just 11 months old, her parents fled their homeland, walking to a Thai refugee camp to escape the brutal guerrilla warfare engulfing Cambodia. “Growing up, I always felt like I was really Khmer, really Cambodian,” Nataly says. “But it was only once I got to Cambodia that I realised I’m actually really Australian.” She first returned to Cambodia as an 18 year old and was shocked to discover the conditions much of her extended family was living in: “I think I cried every night.” Yet she somehow felt instantly…

There’s plenty of old stuff in Geordie Malone and Eartha Smith’s place. Lots to look at, and most of it has a story attached to it. It would be easy, however, to overlook one thing in a display unit at the top of the stairs – a tiny little glass bottle, cracked all over, a bit dirty looking inside, and all they have left from one chapter in their lives. “It still has smoke in it,” says Eartha, explaining that she found it in the ashes after Morrow Park, an old Newcastle bowling club and arts hub, burnt down. It’s where she and Geordie met, and where both of them had been living at one stage. When Morrow Park went up in flames, Eartha, who has a vintage clothes business,…

Setting up camp in old houses, complete with decades of history and grime embedded in their walls, can be both charming and kind of annoying. “It’s definitely got its quirks,” says Danni Harris of the home she’s shared for the past two years with her husband-to-be, Alec Hall. “Nothing ever works how it’s supposed to, it’s freezing in winter and the whole place creaks.” Not that any of that matters – they love the place. With the two of them working all sorts of odd hours in demanding jobs and studying on top of that, it’s important that their home feels like a sanctuary from the world. “Alec does a couple of overnight shifts working with kids – it’s nice to come home and wind down after that,” says Danni.…

Hayley and Chadd Kessner have always tried to instil in their children the idea that home isn’t bound to four walls – it’s wherever you are with the people you love. “We have a bit of a loose motto in our house, that change is good for the soul,” says Hayley. But after nearly a decade spent as a FIFO (fly in, fly out) family due to Chadd’s work in the mines, Jaspa, 12, Sascha, 11, Scarlett, 5, and Behemoth Aristotle the great Dane, are enjoying putting down some roots on 25 acres of Australian bush in the tiny town of Catterick, Western Australia. After a tip-off from her sister, who discovered the neighbouring community of Bridgetown while at a music festival, Hayley, on the hunt for a proper home,…

When Rachel Burke and Thomas Lynch first inspected the house they now call home, they didn’t see eye to eye. Thomas struggled to see past the dowdy furniture, crappy carpet and garish bedroom walls. Rachel fell hard for the ’40s post-war cottage. It even had a dog door for their sausage dog, Daphne. On the drive home, there followed what Thomas diplomatically describes as an “exchange” and Rachel freely admits was a tantrum. “I wigged out!” she said. “It was the last place we saw after inspecting a series of bleak-looking houses. As soon as I walked in, I knew it was the place for us. It had loads of character but didn’t require a crazy amount of renovations like some of the other properties we had seen. It just…

There’s precious little space at the Windred-Wornes residence. Mabel, 17, has a room crammed with mum Jo’s craft supplies; Ivy, 14, shares a space with little brother Percy. Meanwhile, Jo’s desk is in the hallway, and the lounge room floor doubles as the kids’ study area. But it’s home. It’s also where Mabel and Ivy pen their award-winning music. The teenagers recall the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack playing in the background of their childhood “forever”, their introduction to three-part harmonies and Americana folk. As Charm of Finches, they make the kind of tunes that wrap you in a blanket of stars. Highly respected in the independent music community, they’ve gigged with Clare Bowditch and toured Australia. They’ve lived in the Northcote family home all their lives. MABEL //…

There’s a certain rhythm to life when you live above a church. While the rest of the world manages a lie-in on a Sunday morning, it’s an early start at Sam James, Emma Finneran and Matt Bromhead’s place. First, there are the bells. “I’ve never been able to work out whether they’re to say the service is starting or it’s over, even after all this time,” says Sam, who’s been living there for four years, and whose bedroom was padded when he moved in. “That must have been the previous tenant’s attempt at soundproofing, but I don’t see how it could have worked. It looked quite eerie.” Then there’s the chanting. “No hymn singing from the congregation,” he says. “It’s just one or two men chanting, that’s it.” After that,…

Ophelia Mikkelson and Ryder Jones tell each other that one day they will live in a house with a view of the sea where they can watch the sun turn the water to liquid gold. For now, though, they realise they’re onto a good thing. “We can’t see the sea from our house, though we can hear it,” Ophelia says. “Actually, we’re doing pretty well. We will be lying in bed and Ryder will say, ‘The waves sound like they might be big, I better go and have a look.’” The couple – he’s a sculptor and designer, she’s a sock maker, spatial designer and photographer – live in a ’70s surfie beach shack in the small coastal settlement of Tairua on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula. “The proximity to the…

Where do you live? I live with my mum and dad and brother in a five-room flat. My parents bought this place almost 30 years ago when it was new. My brother was five at that time and lived at the office my dad and mum ran – my mum and brother slept on the sofa and my dad slept on the reclining chair every night. I got lucky, I’ve lived in this house since I was born. I studied in Sydney for about three years, and missed this space every day. Singapore is really fast paced and things change rapidly. But in this neighbourhood, changes happen slowly. One of my favourite stalls downstairs has chicken rice. The auntie has worked there for as long as I can remember, and…

How did you end up living in Sendagi? I used to work in an art gallery here as a student and always wanted to live here. It has a very old Japanese feel. There are many houses where writers and artists lived in the past. There are a lot of temples and graveyards. It’s like an old art town. Atmospheric and historic. Since Japan’s 2011 earthquake, it has started changing – people have been pulling down more old buildings and putting up new ones. But it is still an interesting area. What about the building itself? It was built in 1994 by the owner, who is an architect. There are only three properties in the building – an office on the ground floor and a young woman on the first…