The Studio was home for myself and my partner Rob while we built our new house at Blackheath, in the beautiful Blue Mountains. Now that we have moved out we have decided to let the detached property to birdwatchers, bushwalkers and nature lovers on a short stay
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Pieris japonica grows best in a cool climate, with mildly acidic soil. It loves dappled shade. For this reason, gardens in the upper Blue Mountains suit it perfectly. It has racemes of pearly white or pink flowers that resemble lily-of-the-valley. Here is my white flowering shrub, growing
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On a recent (very rare) sunny day here in the Blue Mountains, my partner Rob and I visited the recently restored Everglades House at Leura. I had read a feature about it in the January 2024 National Trust magazine. Even though we live nearby at Blackheath, it
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Widow Wonga is a bird very close to my heart….and is loved just as much by my husband Rob. She and her partner have been living and rearing chicks in our Blackheath garden over a very long period, sometimes producing several sets of twins a year. I
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I’ve only ever worn plain white tee-shirts, but I’m tempted to buy this one with a ‘hairpin’ banksia on it. The correct name is Banksia spinulosa. ‘Spinulosa’ refers to the spiny leaf tips, which are thankfully fairly soft, What a great plant; able to cope with heavy
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Gathering tinder for the fire is very satisfying. I have loved doing this I was child, gathering sticks in the Tasmanian bush. Behind the dear old dogs in the following photo is the woodheap on our farm. It was taken circa 1960. We had an open fire
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Many years ago I read a book called This Bed My Centre, by Melbourne born Ellen Newton (1896 -1972) In the 1960s Ellen ended up in a series of Sydney nursing homes due to chronic angina. There she remained for six unhappy years, longing to be in
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Celebrations in Australia for the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth were on a scale it’s hard to imagine these days. Every town and city in the nation strived to do the occasion justice. The Blue Mountains, where I now live, certainly stepped up. At Katoomba there was
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A sweet, Eastern Water Skink family have lived inside an old stone wall in our Blue Mountains garden for years. When we were building a new house on the site we had to dismantle part of the wall. My lovely partner Rob decided it was only
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In 1947 the movie Bush Christmas was filmed in the Burragorang Valley and the nearby Blue Mountains of New South Wales. As the caption of the following photo mentions, the Valley was subsequently flooded to create Warragamba Dam. There is now a controversial plan to raise the
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