Fraser House
Some houses you can walk into and instantly feel welcome. For Gippsland-based artist Sue Fraser, her warmth and rich life welcome you into her cob-brick home before you even step foot inside. Sue and her husband, Iain, are no strangers to mud-brick dwellings, after living in an Alistair Knox designed and built home in Melbourne's North decades earlier. The couple reinstated the ingenuity of the natural material for their own design in the early 2010s.
Celebrating the idea of 'popping in' and 'dropping by', Fraser's home is located in the dense bush of central Gippsland, on a property that also contains her daughter's family home only a short garden trail away. Layered with years of travel knick-knacks, paintings by herself and her children (expertly framed by Iain), numerous books and hand-crafted ceramics, you can't help but feel compelled to sit and ask where she collected her pieces.
Each element in the home has a story. Salvaged sleepers from the original railway connecting the towns from Bairnsdale to Orbost are the sturdy beams that frame the ceiling and doorways, above red brick that continues throughout the floors inside and out of the house. Hand-made, considered finishes are evident in each area of the home, there is a balance of raw and patinaed materials between timber, bricks and mud brick render. The walls and window sills generate wide organic rendered curves that culminate in an anchoring fireplace partitioning the living and dining areas of the home.
The kitchen invites the surrounding silvery eucalyptus forest inside, painted a muted green, against a red hardwood counter to match collected Moroccan tiles from the couples travels abroad. The key utility space is a solid redwood kitchen island, covered in home-grown vegetables, home-made bread and various bowls facing a cream Falcon cooker, flanked by a curved window seat for the keen kitchen observer to watch over dinner preparation.
Antique timber furniture is scattered in the living spaces; original Australian-made Tessa chairs in matching muted green upholstery are arranged next to a wide window to peruse the valley below. Each surface has a collected artefact or ceramic. Following a gallery-like hallway, a patchwork of Fraser's artworks adorn the bumpy and hand-rendered walls in between timber-framed doorways housing scavenged second-hand glass doors. The private spaces offer a more moody, shaded side to the home, facing south. A eucalyptus green bathroom spotlighting a pink basin, floored by patterned tiles mirroring the numerous Turkish rugs, is tucked away.
The western orientation is supported by a vine-clad verandah, taking motifs from classic Australian farmhouses, where relaxing seats are placed to take in the last moments of sun over the bush reserve. Golden light drenches the pale walls inside and carries through from the rich glazing into the internal horse-shoe courtyard, transitioning into more of a Mediterranean villa in the out buildings paired with a hardy succulent garden.
Fraser's studio connects to the main house and exudes the same natural tactility of hand-rendered mud brick walls and collected furniture. Through considerate accumulation over many years of practice, over-stuffed shelves of books reveal the tell-tale signs of an artist. Aprons lay waiting for their next artwork where scraps of Fraser's lithographs, paintings and her husband's framing workshop cover the walls and tables.
A short walk through Fraser's home provides hours of travel stories, praise for her children and grandchildren's artworks and musings of her own work. In true grandmother style, everyone is welcome in her home for a quick cuppa or pinch of flour - the fire is warm, and the stove is on. A true tapestry of her and her family's colourful and artistic life has been embedded in these walls and furnishings.
