Rick and Suzy Miller don’t watch TV. They don’t even have one. Instead of consuming things other people have created, they are far more interested in creating things themselves.
JUST outside Bathurst, New South Wales, between a road and a railway line, sits a perfectly proportioned Georgian house, with two old lilac bushes growing either side of the front door. Its plastered walls are chipped, the faded green window shutters hang wonkily on their hinges and the window panes rattle when a train whizzes past.
The lady of the house sits upstairs stitching a quilt that she has been working on for months. The sound of the piano keeps her company, drifting up the central staircase from the room below. The house is surrounded by curved garden beds of chocolate alluvial soil, brimming with dahlias and cosmos and towering cardoons, while inside it is dark and cosy. The rooms are filled with taxidermy, exotic textiles and old furniture from all over the world.
I didn’t know houses—or rather, atmospheres—like this existed in Australia. Not a downlight in sight.
