Ghosts and Whispers
Sometimes a room finds you before you find it.
This one, with its soft light and creaking bones, has been waiting – a quiet keeper of stories and the scent of whiskey and wax. I’ve been calling it the Speak Easy, though the name feels more like a wink than a declaration. The leather chairs are sinkable, the walls marked with time and in the evenings, candlelight flickers like memory.
Well, that’s the plan anyway...
There’s something about old rooms – their quiet whispers, the way they hold traces of lives once lived. I’m learning to listen to that language of light and dust, of timbers and echoes as I shape this space into something new. As I move slowly toward light, laughter and gatherings again.
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Things that have shaped our thoughts this week
A Ginger Fluff Revival
A nod to the Country Women’s Association classic — the perfect cake for garden lunches and impromptu gatherings.
Les fleurs dédaignées, Hilda Rix Nicholas
Dangerously Modern | Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890–1940
Art Gallery of New South Wales, 11 October 2025 – 15 February 2026
An unprecedented exhibition celebrating the women who broke with convention to pursue art abroad — from Grace Cossington Smith and Nora Heysen to the lesser-known Agnes Goodsir and Helen Stewart. Over 200 works tracing modernism’s wild, luminous edges. Read more →
Words That Stay
World of Interiors, October 2025 — Editor’s Letter
“If I go far enough, if I keep going past the boring, obedient part of me with its foot always riding the brake … I find myself moving out into another region, a bigger, broader place where everybody else lives: a fearless, open-hearted firmament where images swarm and there’s music, and poetry that we almost understand…”
Read | How to End a Story by Helen Garner
Garner’s third volume of diaries — sharp, intimate and deeply human.
Simmone Logue Sourdough Workshop
There are just a few places left for our dear friend Simmone Logue’s sourdough workshop at Essington Park on Saturday, 1 November 2025.
Simmone will share the art of creating your own starter, baking beautiful loaves, and preparing three of her favourite toppings for easy entertaining. Each guest will take home a portion of Simmone’s much-loved, three-year-old starter — a little piece of her kitchen to continue your own ritual at home.
→ Grab one of the last places for Simmone’s workshop
Hill End Analogue Festival | “Fugitive”
14–16 November 2025, Hill End NSW
A biennial celebration of analogue photography, hosted across nine heritage buildings — with exhibitions, artist talks, performances and music.