Indholdsfortegnelse for Spaces Volume 3 i Spaces Volume 3

EVERYONE HAS THEIR DREAM HOME. For a bunch of Melbourne people, it’s an old place on Sydney Road, Brunswick. It used to be a Chinese restaurant; shop downstairs, flat upstairs. The ‘New Moon Cafe’ sign still hangs out the front. “It was weird and mysterious,” says Karlee Sangster. “I think it was a crazy share house, and was always really rundown and interesting looking.” Everyone in the area knows the building, she says. All her friends have fantasised about what they would do with it if they ever got it. Even before she met her partner Oliver Hextall, “we were always both quietly in love with the building,” she says. Karlee and Oliver liked the house they were in, except for the spiralling rent and the landlord talking about redevelopment.…

SOMETIMES IT’S SO QUIET YOU CAN HEAR THE SOUND OF WHALES EXHALING AS THEY SURFACE ON THE SEA BELOW THE HOUSE. BY AN INTERESTING QUIRK OF FATE, Sam Proudley and Keiran Lusk’s journey from suburban Brisbane to lighthouse living at remote Cape Moreton on Moreton Island began with an internet search. “Way before Keiran got the job as park ranger we had actually Googled, ‘How does one go about living at a lighthouse?’” says Sam. “But in the end, I think the lighthouse found us.” After an eight-year stint in the Northern Territory, trying his hand at everything from tour guiding to Pitjantjatjara language interpreting, Keiran landed a position as National Park ranger on Moreton Island in Queensland’s south-east corner. As luck would have it, the only suitable spare accommodation…

THERE ARE VARIOUS REASONS why people live where they do. Here’s the very short version, according to James Young, of why he and partner Elliat Rich have been living in Alice Springs for the past 10 years: “When you narrow it down, there aren’t many places in Australia where there’s vast professional opportunities and camels.” As Elliat puts it, “In our hearts, we knew that was where we were going without having to go through a long process of articulating why.” When you hear their story, it seems an inevitable choice. While others in their early twenties were exploring Europe or Asia, Elliat and James, who had met at art school, were involved in a two-year camel trek: one year in the planning, making the gear (including camel saddles) and…

LARA TORR DESCRIBES HER APARTMENT as “full but very petite”. With a combined living, dining and kitchen space, plus a bedroom, it’s jam-packed with old furniture, colourful rugs, indoor plants, local and foreign art and endless photos of her family and friends. “My little second cousin comes over occasionally, walks in laughing and says, ‘It’s missing a room’, as if someone forgot to build the rest of the place.” There’s both a haphazard and a curated feel to it, as if the contents of an eccentric museum have been emptied and rearranged in a single room. Lara enjoys the history of it all, and finds stories in everything. Lara, a visual artist, had never planned to buy a place. “Working in the arts sector, I wrote home ownership off as…

LOOKING FOR LOVE ONLINE, Kirsten Devitt’s methods for selecting a potential suitor were quite unorthodox but extremely successful. It was all about the background of their profile picture. If venetian blinds were visible, the poor guy didn’t stand a chance. When she came across an attractive man who had taken his head shot standing in front of old-fashioned vertical timber panelling, she took a punt and made contact with him. A good decision as it turns out, because Richard, a pipe organ builder, is now her husband, and the house he took the photo in, built in 1935 with a tin roof and bull-nosed verandah, is her home. She couldn’t be happier. Kirsten’s first impressions of the classic weatherboard Queenslander were of something “old and gentle and time tested”. But…

WHEN ANNA LILLAS AND JOHN FORBES were looking for somewhere to live, she knew one thing – she didn’t want to live in an apartment. She’d grown up in the Tasmanian bush and still craved a significant outdoor space. But a few months ago, John had seen a place at the end of Melbourne’s busy Sydney Road and encouraged Anna to have a look. “I realised, ‘Oh, there’s a huge park across the road.’ From there, I fell in love with it.” The apartment was built around the late ’20s, and Anna is currently looking for the original title deeds so she can uncover more of the history of the building. They do know that, at some point, it was divided into four: two apartments upstairs and two downstairs. Unlike…

NERIDAH STOCKLEY AND BEN WALL’S HOUSE was once nicknamed ‘The Shipwreck’. That’s because “it washed up on the banks of the Todd River sometime in the ’60s or ’70s, from a uranium mine near a place called Rum Jungle in the Top End”, says Ben. It’s definitely been moved from somewhere; you can see where the floorboards have been clearly sliced through with a circular saw, cutting the house in half and making the pieces narrow enough to fit on the back of trucks. It now sits at the beginning of the Ross Highway a few kilometres outside Alice Springs, but as far as highways go, this one’s pretty quiet. Before Ben and Neridah moved in, the house, which was probably built in the ’60s, was lived in, says Ben,…

TO BE QUITE HONEST, I HAVE NEVER BEEN A BIG FAN OF TOYS AND FIGURINES. BUT SEEING HIM GETTING EXCITED ABOUT THEM IS A DIFFERENT THING. I THINK I APPRECIATE THEM MORE NOW. MARK SOETANTYO AND STACIA HADIUTOMO’S place is in flux. Mark has been living in the apartment for three years; Stacia has only been there for a week. Clearly, things will be changing. “There’s too much boys’ stuff around,” says Stacia. “I haven’t brought many of my things here – just a large artwork, all of my shoes and a rug.” The two, who are from Jakarta and met through friends at uni, had both been living in apartments near Chinatown before their respective moves to Surry Hills. Chinatown was a very convenient spot but, says Stacia, “was…

ROSE JENSEN HOLM operates on a strict but simple philosophy when it comes to furnishing her home – it has to be handmade, artistic or vintage. This applies to everything from the Chemex Coffeemaker to the mug she drinks her brew from, the vinyl records she listens to and the pots that hold her many house plants. There’s not a plastic pot to be seen. “As an artist I feel this is extremely important – to be surrounded by beautiful things made with love means you never get sick of anything,” she says. “I’d much rather support artists than department stores.” As a result, the little three-bedroom worker’s cottage she shares with her husband, Dan, and cat, Roxi, is a bit of an artwork in itself. Neat as a pin…

VISITORS TO VIEILLE BRANCHE in Albion, Brisbane, often say to owners Jennifer Hillhouse and JC Lehuby, “If this is what your shop is like, I can’t imagine how amazing your house would be.” With a warehouse space full of French vintage and antique furniture, and bits and pieces that would look good in any space, it stands to reason that their own place would be unique. And it is, for more than one reason. After Jennifer and JC met in 2011, when he was travelling around Australia, they wanted to save money for a trip to France to see his family. Their best option, they decided, was to move out of their expensive West End rental – into a shed in the backyard of Jen’s parents’ place in Paddington. It…

IT WAS SO NAFF INSIDE – THERE WERE JUST A COUPLE OF BUNKS AND ROTTEN SOFAS. IT WAS JUST A SHELL REALLY; IT HAD A DIRT FLOOR WITH GRASS GROWING OUT OF IT, AND THAT WAS ABOUT IT. SOME PEOPLE TAKE ONE LOOK at a place and that’s it. However, Susan Weil definitely didn’t fall in love at first sight when she saw photographs online of a shed at Hernani, not far from Dorrigo in New South Wales. “Of all the sheds out there, this was the ugliest one I could have bought,” she says. “It was 1980s daggy – definitely not cool.” But Susan, apart from being handy with a set of tools, also seems ridiculously imaginative – she can look at a metal box painted in a horrible…

KIM WEBECK ISN’T HOME AS MUCH as she’d like to be. She spends half her working life across Central Australia, away from her place in Alice Springs. Sometimes, in the cooler months at least, she’s out bush for two or three weeks at a time, working on various projects with the Central Land Council. Kim works with Aboriginal women, helping develop land management-based projects that women see as a priority. These projects, which can involve transferring knowlege between generations, include working with songlines, bush medicines, tracking, burning, language, mapping and technology. Her work often means driving on roads that eat up tyres. “My work is so dirty, I come back dirty and bring that with me,” she says. It’s about the only vaguely negative thing she can say about her…

KAREENA ZEREFOS HAD BEEN LIVING in London for almost three years when she decided she couldn’t do another winter over there. It was a visit to her family’s home on the Greek Island of Samos that finally did it – all that sunshine and crystal clear blue water. So she decided to return to Sydney for the summer and see how it felt. “There was a part of me that really needed to reconnect with that sense of home and family, as well as be close to the ocean,” she says. The artist and illustrator didn’t intend to settle back permanently, but that’s the way it turned out. While she stayed in her own apartment in Kirribilli for a few months, it just didn’t feel right. “The whole point of…

IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT WHEN Helen Proctor and Alicia Goodmanson stumbled upon a one-bedroom apartment on Abercrombie Street in Sydney’s Chippendale. The thought of living above a takeaway Thai shop didn’t seem to turn them off; neither did the construction site they found inside what was once student housing. “The front room just sold us,” says Alicia. “It’s so open and beautiful.” The couple managed to see past the grungy stickers on the windows and canary yellow walls to the opportunity of creating their own personalised living space. Their elderly Korean landlords rejected requests for a repaint, but Helen and Alicia insist the yellow has grown on them. “It actually kind of works all right with our stuff,” says Alicia. The couple moved from a Camperdown share house…

ASK NEW ZEALAND NATIVES KOREY CONDON and Penny Busch what they love most about their place in Sydney’s Curl Curl, and they will tell you that there are no other houses between them and the beach, just a road. Avid surfer Korey saw a Gumtree listing – without pictures – for “a house zero skips to the beach” and called up immediately. Not to be deterred by a little thing like the wrong phone number, he persisted and eventually lined up an interview with the owners that night. Korey was pleasantly surprised (absolutely chuffed, in fact) to discover he recognised the place. “I used to drive past it when I went surfing,” he says. “And every single time I would think, this is my dream house.” The owners signed him…

ANDREA SHAW AND DUNCAN RUSSELL-SMITH couldn’t believe their luck when they discovered they were the only ones to put in a rental application on their late ’60s modernist dream home. (“People in Geelong don’t really get it,” says Andrea.) When she first saw the photos online she couldn’t believe the “amazingly beautiful stone wall”, the sloped ceiling in the lounge room and wood detailing throughout the house. “I knew this was going to be the one,” she says. The pair moved from Bendigo to Geelong about a year ago. Originally, they were looking for a rental closer to their studio spaces at Mount Duneed, on the road to Torquay, but nothing came up, so they decided to give Geelong a go. “We’re only 20 minutes away and the rent is…

ANGELA HENLEY’S SHIFT FROM inner-city Melbourne to country town Kyneton was mainly about finding a spot for her caravan to sit. After years of trawling through eBay and Gumtree in search of a home-on-wheels weekender, Angela eventually spotted her ideal 1952 Globetrotter caravan on a noticeboard at her local supermarket. Unfortunately, her tiny Brunswick abode didn’t have room for her dream vehicle, so it spent a good two years parked in her sister’s suburban driveway. Angela has now found it a place to rest on an acre of land backing onto the state forest at Lauriston, just five minutes outside Kyneton. The Globetrotter shares the land with a mixed bag of little structures, in various states of disrepair, including a bungalow shack, four sheds, a glasshouse and an original W…

PERCUSSIONIST BREE VAN REYK came back from touring at the end of 2012 to find her girlfriend Chloe Goldsmith had made her a Christmas present. She’d made the bed. Literally. It’s a plywood number with drawers underneath that architect Chloe constructed in a workshop in Sydney’s Marrickville when she was working there as a carpenter. It’s so heavy that, even though it’s in four sections, she had to ask friends to help her cart it upstairs to Bree’s apartment. “It’s a total dream,” says Bree. “I hadn’t had a bed before, just a mattress on the floor.” That was the first major mark Chloe made on the one-bedroom apartment, in a small block near the beach in Clovelly. When she and her cat Sage moved in some time later, she…

TANNIA LEE IS THE PERFECT ADVERTISEMENT for the secret law of attraction. As a long-time collector of vintage clothing, furniture and other paraphernalia, experience has taught her that her dream piece is just around the corner. Even so, she never expected the universe to turn up something as precious as the Dunedin house she and her “IT geek” husband Dylan now live in. After two years of running her retro-clothing store, Most Wanted Vintage, in Wellington, Tannia was looking for something else to do. As they were closing up the shop in late 2012, Dylan was offered a two-year contract in Dunedin. “We felt a bit sad about leaving Wellington,” Tannia says, “but it seemed like a really good idea. I grew up in Dunedin and had family there, so…

IN AN INDUSTRIAL AREA OF SYDNEY, where one warehouse looks pretty much like another, you could walk past The Nest Creative Space without noticing it. Some simple signage is the only indication of the talent that lies behind an unremarkable door. Inside, a cavernous open-plan warehouse incorporates the studios, workshops and creative spaces of a bunch of designers, artists, makers and creators. It’s an incubator for ideas, a space where creative freedom is celebrated. The duo who built The Nest are husband and wife team Missy and Daniel Bourne. The story begins in the adjoining warehouse where, previously, they each rented a studio for their various pursuits. By day, they are the directors of I MADE THIS, designing, art directing, creating and hand-making bespoke interior fit-outs, art installations and window…

WHEN GEMMA PATFORD LEGGE and Duncan Legge first saw their place, it took a fair bit of imagination to picture what it could be. The floors were covered in ugly old carpet and the kitchen was unusable, its unplugged oven sitting squat in the middle of the room. An old couple had been living in the ’70s apartment for 20 or 30 years. “They had filled the place wall to wall with stuff and it was pretty horrible, but we saw it as a nice sort of shell,” says Duncan. Part of the appeal was that it had a spare bedroom that Gemma, who makes everything from hand-painted rope baskets to wall hangings and wreaths, could use as a home studio. She used to share an office with a film…

The idea of a share house can conjure up unsavoury images of a kitchen piled with dirty dishes, a filthy bathroom, a lack of privacy and weird, antisocial flatmates. Sharing a house with strangers can be a lot like trying to put together a puzzle full of pieces that just don’t quite fit; even living with good friends can go horribly wrong. But Rose, Ryan, Vanessa, Stein and Chriso defy these expectations. They live in a sprawling three-level timber tree house near the top of a very steep hill, in a coastal suburb of the Gold Coast. Mount Street is a special spot, a stone’s throw from suburbia but hidden among the gum trees and almost completely private. As far as share houses go, it doesn’t get much better. The…

KELLY CLOAKE AND AEDAN HOWLETT MET when they were working in a brewery bar in Fremantle. Once they started talking about buying a place together, six or seven years ago, there was only one thing to do – and that was get out of Western Australia. “We knew we’d never be able to afford anywhere on an artist’s and a hospitality wage,” says Kelly. At the time, Tasmania looked like a good option. Neither Kelly nor Aedan had had much to do with it before but, as soon as they landed in Hobart, they knew they’d stay, she says. “It’s big enough to be a small city, with all the city stuff you can do, like go to movies or out to dinner, but it’s small enough to be walkable.”…