Country Style

Escape the everyday

Country Style2 min read
Welcome Letter
OUR ANNUAL Art Issue is one of my favourites to work on. Every year, I’m amazed at the creativity that comes out of regional Australia. I also look forward to collaborating with the Michael Reid team for our Country Style art exhibition. This year’s
Country Style2 min read
In This Issue...
First Nations Yol u woman Siena became a photographer as a child, when her parents gave her a hand-me-down camera. See page 62 for her images of artist Djirrirra Wunu murra Yukuwa. “Being a Yol u woman, I grew up on Country learning the knowledge of
Country Style5 min read
Your Page
Country Style, you have been a thoroughly enjoyed subscription gift for my dear mum for many years now. My mum is a nurse, and she’s a kind, thoughtful woman – especially during this past year as I transitioned into my own new role as ‘Mum’ after bir
Country Style7 min read
March
Grazing at the Watering Hole, Mar 11 For an authentic taste of life in outback Queensland, don’t miss Grazing at the Watering Hole, held in Thallon, six hours’ drive west of Brisbane. The Thallon Recreation Grounds will host a feast for 200 guests se
Country Style2 min read
House To Home
Indulge an artist in your life with the dazzling array of art supplies stocked at The Paint Box in Hahndorf, SA. Pastels, watercolours, oil paints and canvases are on display in the shop, which dates from 1839, or online at: thepaintbox.com.au Somet
Country Style3 min read
A Stitch In Time
IN MY STUDY, I have a great heap of finished tapestries. They are completely disconnected; there’s no symmetry of colour or design. Laying them out, I wish some other version of me existed… a version who had realised I was going to do this for years
Country Style2 min read
Homegrown
WE ALL HAVE THAT thing, whether it be cooking, yoga, sport, writing or playing an instrument, that fills our creative cup; an activity where you become so involved in the process that you almost enter a meditative state. For Clay Beehive founder Mela
Country Style3 min read
Collective Voice
DESPITE ITS WHITE-HOT FEROCITY, summer in outback Queensland is Angie Nisbet’s favourite time of year. From the homestead on her family’s 12,950-hectare station, 80 kilometres south of Hughenden, the 35-year-old watches the horizon bruise and blacken
Country Style3 min read
Blooming Ambition
WHAT DO YOU DO IF you’re a florist who can no longer work with commercially grown flowers? For Celine Watz, the answer was to grow her own. A florist since finishing high school, Celine’s life took a turn when she was diagnosed with the autoimmune th
Country Style4 min read
A Matter Of Practice
I BUY MY T-SHIRTS from Bloomingdale’s in the United States. When it comes to home delivery and shopping transcontinentally, it has always been easier, less costly, and none too time-shabby to let my fingers do the walking. In this increasingly global
Country Style4 min read
Fire And Earth
FOR ARTIST CARLY LE CERF, who is based in Western Australia’s Mount Barker, on Wagyl Kaip and Southern Noongar lands, conveying the vast beauty of Australia’s rugged interior landscapes is a dance between what she remembers and letting her medium spe
Country Style4 min read
The Storyteller
LIKE A SCULPTOR who sees form in a block of marble, artist Lucy Vader intuitively understands what a blank canvas wants to say. “I can look at a canvas and start to see shape on it,” she says. “It’s awesomely intimidating and exciting at the same tim
Country Style3 min read
Patterned Country
SHE HAS LIVED IN north-eastern Arnhem Land all her life, but Djirrirra Wunu murra Yukuwa’s artworks have been exhibited around Australia, and as far away as the United States and China. Growing up in the remote community of Gä gan, the ancestral land
Country Style5 min read
Nature’s Frame
EVERY ARTIST NEEDS A blank canvas, and space to create. Janine Everett found hers on the beautiful rural coastal belt of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. With beach on one side and grazing cattle on the other, Janine and her husband, Bernie, first vi
Country Style4 min readArchitecture
Living In Colour
AS A TEENAGER, SALLY LE ROUX often had sleepovers at the Pindari farmhouse – the home of a high-school friend, 35 minutes’ drive west of Toowoomba. Set on 26 hectares and surrounded by an established garden of jasmine, salvias, camellias, and towerin
Country Style4 min readArchitecture
Our Place
THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE remodelling and restyling of Tabitha and Richard Young’s Queensland home initially came from a faraway source – a US television program, Fixer Upper, set in Texas. Tabitha is a fan of the work of interior designer and star
Country Style3 min read
Creative Force
IF ANYONE CAN DEMONSTRATE the truth of the phrase, “patience is a virtue,” Barb Somervaille can. Barb, 58, and her husband Andrew, 64, live at Tallowood, an 11-hectare property in Southern Queensland’s Ravensbourne, on Jagera, Giabal and Jarowair lan
Country Style2 min readHome & Garden
Bathing Belles
A claw-foot bath brings period drama to the smallest room – or the bedroom, as in this guest cottage at Maleny Lodge, Qld. Cheryl Carr of Albert & Grace, who styled the room, says: “The mood for this space was fresh, youthful and calming with a moder
Country Style3 min read
Creating A Buzz
MOST GARDENERS LOVE BEES, but my husband really, REALLY loves bees. It’s a love affair that has spanned a decade now, and has weathered good seasons and poor seasons, hive beetle and countless stings – including to rather sensitive parts, due to a ho
Country Style3 min read
Edible Art
WHEN I WAS IN YEAR ONE, I had the most wonderful schoolteacher. She was creative and kind, and genuinely seemed to like small children – a rare combination – and her shoes always matched her handbag. Did I mention that I loved her? Art projects were
Country Style2 min read
Inside View
WORKING FROM HOME certainly has its merits, but it can also come with distractions, especially if you’re a mum to three little boys. And it was with this in mind that still-life artist Whitney Spicer went in search of a dedicated space to paint – awa
Country Style3 min read
Behind The Label
A HALF PALLET of the world’s least necessary wine sits naked in a Clare Valley shed. The only thing identifying it is the general indifference of all those who pass by it, and my name written in black texta on the plastic wrap keeping it all together
Country Style4 min read
The Style Diary
AFTER A BLISSFUL childhood in Orange, NSW, with a painter for a mother, Larissa Blake was always going to be an artist – but her path hasn’t been a straightforward one. “I was blessed with a creative childhood with access to plenty of materials for m
Country Style3 min read
Stylish By Nature
THE LAST LONG DAYS OF SUMMER are sighing to a close. And with the fresh breezes of autumn, its cooler mornings and earlier sunsets, come new opportunities to layer colour, pattern and texture into your wardrobe. Inspiration for autumnal clothing isn’
Country Style3 min read
Sole Purpose
THERE AREN’T TOO MANY homegrown, locally owned companies whose very name brings up happy memories and a bright thread of associations that’s woven into the fabric of Australian society. Rossi Boots is one of the storied few. Founded in 1910 by Arthur
Country Style5 min read
Book Club
Paul Ashford Harris, Ventura, $32.99 Five gold stars! This is how history should be told, though Harris is not a historian. He’s been director of the World Wildlife Fund and had a seat on the Sydney stock exchange. He found a relatively unexplored c
Country Style2 min read
Collectables
I AM CONTACTING YOU to hopefully gain some information about an item that I found in an op shop in Margaret River. All I can tell you is that it looks and feels very old. I presume it is of Chinese origin. The top lifts off, revealing a storage space
Country Style1 min read
At The Museum
COLLECTORS LOVE SOUVENIRS of significant occasions, such as the opening of the Harbour Bridge, the laying of the first stone for a new building, or a member of the royal family planting a tree. Most are presentation objects, such as the scissors used
Country Style3 min read
Dinner Is Served
TODAY, I THOUGHT WE MIGHT like to discuss the science of evolutionary psychology and sociology. Then again, I could be wrong. Those of us who majored in this field will remember that Fred Flintstone and his accomplice Barney Rubble were seldom withou

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