With salvaged furniture, trusted advice and steadfast help from friends, Julie Gibbs builds a library – and a new life.
Words Julie Gibbs
Photography Hugh Stewart
Deep in the Covid winter lockdown of 2021, my marriage collapsed. I left Sydney with the bare essentials and moved into my little 1920 Blue Mountains timber cottage, The Gumnuts. The Airbnb bookings were dissolving week by week and the house could be mine for the foreseeable. It was safe. And it was lonely.
To live here, however, I needed a workspace for my cookery reference library, for my book publishing projects and the Australian Culinary Archive I’m working on for the Powerhouse Museum. But how could I manifest a “room of my own” when I was emotionally on my knees and with Covid making everything seem impossible?
