A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

When I was a teenager, I used to get up at 4am to plait my horse up for a show, but the thought of getting up at 3am from Monday to Friday to do live television, well, I can completely understand why it must be hard for Edwina to find a balance between work and home. It’s why this popular presenter loves to escape over the NSW Blue Mountains to Warramba, the farm she shares with husband Neil Varcoe. “It’s one of the reasons we bought the farm. It gives us a place for time together. I’ve found weeding can be very therapeutic,” she explains. Turning a shed into a comfortable home is something I think about often when I’m trying to work out how to escape from the city and manage to have a horse again. A former visual merchandiser, Lisa Williment’s creative skills are evident in the way she has converted a boatbuilder’s workshop into a home on a few hectares at Black Mountain in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. Another home on page 34 of this issue also takes inspiration from the Australian shed. I think I have told you all before about my mum’s Jack Russell, Piper, who has survived not one but TWO snake bites. Luckily for Piper, the snake was a red-bellied black, but Annabelle Hickson has king brown snakes at her place. A little wire-haired Jack Russell called Bob Mongoose recently joined the Hickson family after Annabelle found a particularly large brown coiled up in the doorway to her children’s bedroom. Bob sleeps in “what is effectively a port-a-cot at the doorway of the kids’ bedroom. The problem is we’ve now all fallen madly in love with him and we need to find something to protect our protector,” writes Annabelle on page 14. And it is a worry — these loyal little dogs do find it very hard to keep out of trouble!

I hope you enjoy the issue. Victoria Carey

When we asked Sunrise presenter Edwina Bartholomew how she managed a work-life balance, her answer was, “I don’t”. She went on to say: “I work really, really hard and then I crash. Then I get up and do it all over again.”