CELEBRATING HOME
AFTER YEARS OVERSEAS, A CHRISTMAS SPENT AT THE FAMILY FARM ON THE EDGE OF THE OCEAN IS EVEN MORE SPECIAL FOR FLISS BROHPY.
After years spent overseas, Fliss Brophy has returned to her childhood country home with her family.
AFTER LIVING ABROAD for several years and with three children aged under five, Western Australian couple Fliss and David Brophy felt the irresistible pull of home. Having grown up on a dairy farm on the south-west coast of the state, Fliss was yearning for the wide spaces and the windswept curve of sand and surf she knew as a child. “We decided that it would be a good time to return to Australia so the kids could have the country upbringing I had,” says the 43-year-old.
Fliss, a former marketing executive, and Dave, 43, a commodities trader, originally moved to Singapore as a newly married couple, when they both had jobs that required a lot of international travel. After the birth of their oldest son Jack, now 11, Fliss left her high-flying job and unexpectedly found herself launching a small business specialising in leather bags and accessories, which she named Bahru. “It all started because I couldn’t find a baby bag that didn’t look like a baby bag,” she says. “I wanted something in beautiful leather with a practical design.”
She began designing more bags and connecting with leather artisans and, before she knew it, Bahru had taken off. “I started selling bags at the local markets and it grew organically from there,” Fliss says.
Soon after the arrival of the couple’s second son, Fred, now 10, they moved to The Hague in the Netherlands where eight-year-old Lucy was born. Fliss loved the “big country town” feel of The Hague but, with Jack approaching school age, and Dave ready to go out on his own, they decided to return to Australia. They moved back to Fliss’s childhood home, a 250-hectare farm on Geographe Bay, two-and-a-halfhours drive south of Perth. Located at the end of a country road, the property is bordered on one side by a state forest of towering Tuart gums (Eucalyptus gomphocephela), and on the other by the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean. “The farm runs along the coast,” says Fliss. “We walk through one paddock to the beach — it’s really beautiful.”
Fliss’s family has farmed this picturesque property since the 1930s: her dad grew up here, as did Fliss and her brother, Simon. When Fliss was young it was a dairy farm, but over the years it has changed to beef cattle and Fliss’s parents run the property in conjunction with Simon, who runs a second property three hours north of Perth. “We all help with the farm, but it’s mainly run by Mum, Dad and my brother. I’m the unskilled farmhand,” explains Fliss.
Fliss, Dave and their kids live in an early 1900s weatherboard cottage on the property, while her parents live in the original 1849 stone cottage (the home in which Fliss grew up) a short distance away. “It was so familiar and so lovely to be back with family,” says Fliss. “And it’s a great place for our kids to grow up. After being in Holland, and being so wrapped up against the cold all the time, they loved the warmth and freedom of being here. I think they ran around semi-nude for the first six months we were here!”
For the Brophys, Christmas is all about togetherness and usually means a visit from Simon and his family. “Christmas day is always a flurry of kids — one of my favourite things about being home is the connection our kids have with their cousins,” says Fliss. A highlight of the Christmas Day menu is always fresh crayfish, caught by Fliss’s dad, Ted. “My sister-in-law does the roast vegies, Dave does the glazed ham, and Dad insists on having turkey. I do a pavlova for dessert… then we all go over the hill and have a swim.”>