Table of contents for Spaces Volume 2 in Spaces Volume 2

A FEW YEARS AGO, Patience Hodgson and John Patterson of the band The Grates had money for the first time in their lives. They’d just signed a publishing deal in England for their first recording, and did what sensible people do – they bought a house, a four-bedroom ’50s place in Camp Hill, Brisbane. There was one slight problem: John fell in love with it straightaway, but Patience didn’t like it. “It was a combo of the physical nature of having a house – so much to clean, and hedges on steroids,” she says, “and the commitment to ‘this place’, which seemed very suburban.” It didn’t help that the couple hadn’t spent much time there, either because they were touring or going off to live in New York. “We hadn’t…

When her grandmother passed away last year, Kelly White and her boyfriend Treva Head decided to keep her 1940s house in the family. Nestled in Sydney’s Kyeemagh, near Brighton-Le-Sands, the modest brick home is now home to the young couple and their fur family – Wilfred, a French bulldog, and Juno, a Rex rabbit. The house also doubles as a studio space for Kelly’s crafty businesses: the jewellery company she runs with her sister, Made By White, and illustration venture, The Storybook Rabbit. This is a place of creativity and imagination and a quick look around shows walls adorned with premium vintage finds and corners literally bursting with strange and colourful curiosities collected from across the globe. Tell us about your new neighbourhood. What’s life like in Kyeemagh? It’s quiet…

EVEN BEFORE NETTI VONTHETHOFF had been to the house, she knew she’d found her new home. It was the real-estate photos of the built-in bar and staircase that did it. “And then I got there and saw the backyard with all that concrete,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to be able to hose my own concrete!” A fixture on the Canberra vintage scene, it was almost inevitable that Netti would beat the dozens of other potential renters to score the house – she and the ’60s suburban one-off are made for each other. To outsiders, Canberra can be a little difficult to penetrate – scratch a little below the surface, though, and there’s some pretty interesting action going on. It’s the same with Netti’s house. From the street, the brick…

“I’M HALF GUARD DOG, HALF CARETAKER,” Sam Clayton says of living above Woy Woy Fishermen’s Wharf, a business his family has owned for more than 30 years. “If my sweet tooth plays up, I can duck downstairs for a sneaky gelato, and I only need to get out of bed five minutes before I have to start work.” Sam started helping out at the fish shop on the NSW Central Coast when he was old enough to walk. “I remember sorting fish with my grandfather when I was about three. From when I was a little kid, Mum and Dad had me doing things like feeding the pelicans, washing dishes, folding boxes and handing out orders in the takeaway.” Since his family has owned it, the wharf has seen a…

BACK IN THE 1950s, a raffle was held in the sleepy Victorian seaside town of Point Lonsdale. Tickets were 10 pounds each, and the prize was a two-storey house with a huge double carport taking up the whole of the bottom level. People in the area still remember buying tickets: at the time, to those who were just married, this seemed like the kind of house to settle in and raise a family. Sixty years later, the house is home to Kate and Mal Heppell and their son, Zig, who was born in it. At the moment, the family spends half the week living in Point Lonsdale and the other half in Hawthorn, Melbourne, but by the end of the year, they would like to be out of the city…

ARTIST LAURA JONES credits her spontaneous approach to life with taking her to some delightfully unexpected places…such as Exeter in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. “I go with the flow and seem to be a bit of a gypsy, taking opportunities as they arise,” she explains. “I suppose the fact that I am even here reflects that about my personality.” Set amidst picturesque green countryside, the pretty village looks very English with its clipped hedges, leafy streets, little lanes and quaint, historic buildings. With three businesses on its single shopping street, the town’s population count falls short of 1000, and it was a series of fortunate events that led Laura to become one of their number. One of the village’s businesses is Gallery Ecosse, a well-respected contemporary art…

I THINK OF MY ROOM AS KIND OF WHAT THE INSIDE OF MY HEAD IS LIKE. IT’S FULL OF LOTS OF RANDOM THINGS THAT MAY NOT NECESSARILY FIT TOGETHER BUT WHEN YOU LOOK AT IT AS A WHOLE THEY ALL SEEM TO HAVE THEIR PLACE. “IF PETER PAN WAS A GIRL who lived in the 1950s and loved bunnies as much as I do, my room is where she would live,” says Kirbee Lawler, a Sydney-based graphic designer and illustrator. She lives at home in leafy Jannali with her mum, dad, younger brother Cooper, the family dog Gidget and her bunny Beatrix (Bea for short). She is, by her own confession, the girl who never grew up, which makes her bedroom a kind of suburban Neverland where childhood keepsakes and…

VIRGINIA MARTIN ISN’T SURE WHAT made her fall in love with the ocean. She just knows that it happened around five years ago. “I’ve been a city girl my whole life, but then I started going to the beach on weekends,” she says. “A friend began teaching me to surf and it changed everything.” For the fashion designer and founder of clothing label búl, this newfound love was a turning point that would inspire every aspect of her life and work. She now finds herself spending even more time beside the ocean since investing in a property in Victoria’s South Gippsland with her mum, stepdad and older brother. The getaway is in a tea tree forest close to Phillip Island and, with not much else around except for a caravan…

IT WAS ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE A PIT STOP. Margeaux Davis, her husband, Matt, and their two baby boys were driving home from a holiday in northern New South Wales and everyone was ready for a break from the car. When they saw the “Open for inspection” sign outside a little weatherboard cottage, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Situated on an acre block in the tiny town of Dunoon, overlooking rolling green hills, macadamia orchards and cow paddocks, the 100-year-old house won Margeaux over the moment she set foot inside. “It was so light and airy and full of character and just felt really friendly…and it was so pretty!” she says. With high ceilings, white walls, polished wooden floors, plentiful natural light and those lovely old casement windows, the…

THERE ISN’T MUCH THAT COULD make Morgan Allender and Justin Hermes leave the Adelaide Hills. “We do have fantasies of buying a loft apartment in Brooklyn, so if we don’t stay here forever, that’s what we’ll do,” Morgan laughs. “But it would have to be pretty special to take us away.” For the artist and founder of The Tenth Meadow floral boutique and her furniture designer boyfriend, it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere anytime soon. They purchased their rambling Woodside property five years ago and it has been a labour of love ever since. Sharing the five-acre site with Morgan and Justin are two Belted Galloway cows (Polly and Buttons), two donkeys (Gordon and Gregory), five nameless chickens, two dogs (Little and Boots) and a cat (Mr Pusskins), and…

A COMMERCIAL BUILDING IN KATOOMBA seemed just the go when Paul Mosig and Rachel Peachey were looking for a house in the Blue Mountains. For a start, it was big enough for them to live in, and run Racket, their design company, from home. There was also room to do their art work, plus the house had a flat out the back for Rachel’s mum. When they first looked at it three years ago, there were all sorts of separate businesses in the old place, including an acupuncturist, a psychologist and two rooms at the front for a community housing organisation. But living in a commercial building can have the odd pitfall. “We still have people coming here looking for the community housing office,” says Paul. “About a year after…

Cabaret artist and stand-up comic aren’t typical occupations for residents in conservative Balwyn North. Then again, Gypsy Wood and Asher Treleaven are anything but typical. What drew the sartorially splendid married couple to this leafy Melbourne suburb in the first place was a charming three-bedroom home built in the ’50s, now complete with plastic pink flamingos and Tupperware. Gypsy is a formally trained dancer who studied at the Victorian College of the Arts and, while on a scholarship, “just fell into burlesque in Paris” (yes, she’s met Dita Von Teese). Before a career in comedy, Asher trained at the National Institute of Circus Arts and worked as a street performer. Theirs is an enviable story of travel, sequins and parties and they have deservedly achieved recognition as world-class performers. When…

IN THE SMALL COASTAL TOWN of Dunsborough in Western Australia’s South West, there are many uninhabited houses. Holiday homes of city-dwelling folk that, full to bursting during the summer months, remain mostly deserted for the rest of the year. It was one such house that caught the eye of Rebecca Williams – purveyor of pretty frocks and the one-woman powerhouse behind Naughty Shorts, her vintage-inspired boutique fashion label. “I would drive past this little pink house and wonder what it would be like to live there,” she explains. “It was always empty. I was a bit curious so eventually I pulled into the driveway and started sussing it out. Then I started peeking in the windows. It was completely empty, not even being used for weekends or holidays. This made…

Built more than 100 years ago, the Paterson Building was a furniture store at a time when horse-drawn carriages still clattered down Fitzroy’s Smith Street. In a suburb that has constantly been shifting between grand and grungy, the building originally owned by W.H Paterson first became home to a beautiful cluster of artists when bohemians overran the joint in the late ’60s. Since then, it has seen everyone from Split Enz to Skyhooks to – if you believe the rumours – a young Brett Whiteley pass through its doors. As part of Melbourne’s alternative culture, the third storey helped usher in the ’90s rave scene, its scarcely legal parties stretching the old timber floors to their limits. One of the last buildings standing in a suburb bounding towards gentrification, the…

WHEN FASHION DESIGNER Kylie Zerbst and her husband Simon Murray were looking for a house to buy about 10 years ago, they came across a cloud-like shape painted on a kitchen wall. It reminded Kylie of one of Simon’s artworks and was enough to spark off an emotional attachment to the partly renovated single-fronted terrace in the inner-city Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy North. Kylie and Simon, a digital creative director in an advertising agency, had been looking at quite a few places. “But none of them felt like us,” she says. “They were all either totally rundown or newly renovated with zero charm. We were happy to do work on them, but couldn’t have afforded a total reno. When we saw our house it was just right.” However, Simon had…

WHEN YOU’RE NUMBER FIVE IN A FAMILY of six girls, secondhand is part of life. “I grew up in Vinnies,” says Sarah Doyle. With a childhood like that, you might think she’d want to be surrounded by new things. Instead, Sarah wears vintage (altered to fit perfectly) or vintage-inspired pieces, and looks as if she’s stepped out of the ’50s; and she and husband Elvis Abrahanowicz’s terrace, in Sydney’s Newtown, is crammed with retro belongings. Sarah and Elvis, who run two Argentinian restaurants, Bodega and Porteño, with their mate Ben Milgate, are crazy about rockabilly. They love the music. They love the style. “Once we found our rockabilly community, we realised it was OK to dress like this every day,” says Sarah. When they’re not working, they’re often cruising around…

MOVING TO PORT ADELAIDE was a big change for Chris and Kara Town. For seven years, they had lived in an apartment in Sydney’s Inner West. It was small, crammed between other buildings, and came with a lack of natural light and an abundance of mould. Now the couple lives in an old stone Federation-style house, in a suburb full of lawnmowers and kids. The house has high ceilings, timber floorboards and enough light to sustain a family of cacti. Kara grew up in Adelaide, and Chris had lived there for a while. “Because Kara’s family are here, we’d been coming back two or three times a year,” Chris says. “Gradually, we noticed changes. New cafés were opening, and the whole vibe of Adelaide began to change. Eventually, every time…

From the outside, you might mistake Little Gold Studios for any of the retired warehouses that litter Brunswick’s old textile district. Inside, however, there’s no missing it: the former sewing factory is an artisanal oasis. Brimming with stationery makers, lighting designers, hand letterers and a trove of others, the studio is a touch of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg in a sleepy Melbourne backstreet, its hanging gardens and light-filled windows a cornucopia of colour in a suburb of concrete. Ask the residents what they like best about it, though, and they’ll tell you something more down to earth: each other. That, and Diesel, the staffy-in-residence. SASS COCKER // STATIONERY DESIGNER, ASK ALICE I found the building in December 2012 and thought, “I have to find a way that I can get this space”,…

MANY OF LILI FOSTER’S MOST TREASURED possessions in her rustic-meets-retro home in northwest Tasmania have been discovered on road trips around the state. Even if they’re not always ones she takes. On a fishing trip to the highlands a few years back, her father Stephen spotted a caravan. When he made enquiries about whether the owners were interested in selling, they declined. “That little caravan had been in the back of my mind ever since,” says Lili. She thought it would be the perfect studio for her Etsy craft business, Once Upon a Time…, as well as a potential playroom for her two-year-old daughter Edie. When her father returned a few years later, he tried his luck again. This time the owners agreed to sell Florence, as the caravan is…

ONE OF MY FAVOURITE ITEMS IN THE HOUSE IS OUR ALEXANDER’S EMPIRE MAP. WHILE WHATEVER OLD ALEX CONQUERED HAS NO HISTORICAL RELEVANCE TO ME, IT’S THE FACT THAT I ALMOST TRIPPED OVER IT FIVE YEARS AGO IN A DARK ALLEYWAY IN NEWTOWN THAT SPEAKS TO ME. WHILE OUR HUMBLE HOME is small in size, it’s big in love and creativity. My partner Ross and I fell into this spot by accident really. A swift move from our beloved Newtown nest was required quick smart. After only two house inspections we were totally over it and settled for this rusty gem. A smarmy real-estate agent, a speedy three-minute inspection and a decent rental history secured us a spot in Redfern’s finest shoebox apartment. We were apprehensive about the move, as our…

HILL END IS THE END OF THE ROAD – there’s literally nowhere to go once you get to the old gold mining town, an hour-and-a-half’s drive through hills from Bathurst in central western New South Wales. For a while in the 1800s, it had a population of 8000, dozens of pubs, an opium den and an oyster bar. Now, there’s empty land where many of the buildings used to stand, and only around 200 people, many of them artists, live there permanently. Goats wander the streets and paddocks. Some of the miners’ cottages are now artists’ residencies – the town has an ever-changing population as poets and painters, sculptors and potters draw inspiration from their surroundings. It’s the sort of place where people are friendly but give each other space,…

RUSSEL KOSKELA AND SASHA TITCHKOSKY were in the middle of renovating their little weatherboard and fibro house in Patonga when they noticed some strangers parked outside. They went out to say hello, and ended up finding out far more about the house than they possibly could have imagined. One of those people was Jean, the granddaughter of Fred and Annie Flowers, who had built it in about 1930. They had a chat with her for a while, and she later wrote them a letter, sharing as much as she could about the house and her memories of it. One thing she shed light on was its odd name – Dickebusch. It was named in memory of Fred and Annie’s son, a medic in World War I, who was killed in…

A 100-YEAR-OLD FARMHOUSE in a valley at the bottom of the world sounds like the setting for a magical, slightly mysterious story, but the reality, says Michelle, was beige. “The house was beige inside and out, with cheap pine panelling and plenty of vinyl on the walls and floors. It was OK, but I certainly didn’t love it.” The weatherboard house was one of the few bumps in a road that carried Michelle, her husband Leo and daughter Elsa from inner-western Sydney to a rural landscape in Tassie. They’d flown down to visit friends in October 2004 and, taken with the countryside around Hobart – the orchards, barns and water, all under the shadow of snow-topped Mount Wellington – moved permanently two months later. It was an easy transition. They…

EARLY IN THE MORNING, when chickens are hustling to get out of their coop and pelicans start clacking on a billabong, Matt and Lentil Purbrick of Grown & Gathered get up to start their day. On a three-acre patch in the middle of Tahbilk Estate Winery, Matt and Lentil grow organic food and flowers on land that’s been in his family since the 1920s. His parents still live on the estate, as does his grandmother, whose house was built in 1939 for Matt’s great-grandfather’s mother, Dorothy. A few years ago, Matt came back from 18 months of travelling and, needing to get away from life behind an office desk, decided to try his hand at farming. “I quickly figured out that I really loved growing things,” he says, “and then…