From Ouyen to Sydney, Helen Healy has experienced the ups and downs of country town living and life in the big smoke. Making a home in Sunraysia 21 years ago, she’s found a place where she can enjoy the perks of both. She shows Teagan Bell around her Mildura abode and shares an insight into her balanced lifestyle. Pictures: Ben Gross
HOME for Helen Healy is many things.
It’s the wide, open skies of the Mallee and the kitchen table where she shares meals with her loved ones.
It’s the art that graces every surface of her house and the fresh air of her garden, where frogs swim freely in their pond and a friendly hive of bees took up residence eight years ago.
To put it in her own words; “home is a place where I can relax and I’m safe, it’s a welcoming place for me, my friends and my family – home is a place where I’m just me.”
Taking a tour of her Mildura home, it’s not hard to see how this is that particular place.
Helen bought the property 21 years ago, after moving back to Sunraysia from Sydney.
Built in the 1960s by World War II pilot and owner of Elliott’s Toys & Hobbies, Viv Elliott, Helen knew it was the house for her.
“As soon as I saw it, I fell in love with it,” she says, adding that its architecture is more considered than first meets the eye.
“He designed this house to be completely east-west in summer, so when the sun comes up, the tree in my front yard are filled with leaves and I’m protected from the summer sun.
“Then in winter all the leaves drop off and the Earth’s axis shifts and I get all the winter sun. It’s got this lovely feeling, it’s like a holiday house.
“So when Viv passed the house over to me it was like a gift.”
Since then, she’s taken pleasure in transforming it into a personal sanctuary and base from which she can navigate her energetic lifestyle.
“I had always rented from the time I left home until we arrived here, so to own your home and put the things that you want in it how you want them to be with no rules to follow, that’s been a great joy,” she says.
Some of those things include a collection of instruments from her days as a music teacher and performer, quirky pieces of mid-century furniture, endless stacks of books and about 70 pieces of art.
“What I really like about my house is that every piece of artwork is from an artist that I know,” Helen says, naming off a few such as local Sonja Hodge, Violet Wadrill Nanaku and the late Annabelle Collette.
There are some items more sentimental than others, such as a chair belonging to Helen’s great great grandmother that made the journey across from England with her, as well as the latest addition to her collection – a pew from the Ouyen church.
“Getting that was really exciting because at the time the Ouyen church was being pulled down and everything was being sold off, I’d just started my business and finances were really tight,” she says.
“Growing up catholic in Ouyen, I used to sing and play guitar in the church and when this couple were selling everything up recently they delivered it to my door and said “we think you should have this”, so I was really happy to get it.”
But for Helen, home is also a place of work.
From the studio office in her backyard, she balances her duties as Mildura’s community development and gender equality councillor with the running of her arts and cultural engagement consultancy business.
Upstairs in her vibrant and comfortable lounge area, Helen’s writing desk takes pride of place, where she works on the fifth draft of her novel for at least an hour each day.
On top of paying regular visits to her two children, who now live in Adelaide and Byron Bay, as well as caring for her Ouyen-based mother and other social commitments and hobbies, Helen acknowledges it’s a juggling act that would baffle the average person, but says organisation keeps her schedule from becoming overwhelming.
“Sometimes I wish there were two of me,” she says with a laugh.
“But I’m a very organised person – I have my work space, I have my creative writing space and I have my job lists.
“When I leave the office each evening I rip off the page of the pad and then write down what I’m doing the next day.
“So I’m very organised for myself and my clients.”
As an active part of the Sunraysia community, Helen says the location of her home is something she also enjoys.
“I’m close to the Arts Centre, its only a 10 minute walk to the CBD, lock island is just across the road and looking out the window I see no neighbours, so it’s pretty quiet,” she says.
“It’s a great place to live, it has the proximity but it’s still spacious and having the river so close, it was a great place to raise kids.”
At the moment, between directing the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show and preparing for Sunraysia’s One Voice choir’s first birthday, Helen is enjoying life’s little pleasures.
“In my spare time I’m embroidering, and I love to make preserves and grow broad beans,” she says.
“With work, some days feel very super pressured, going from one thing to another, but others are pretty cruisy so I can just catch up with friends or read a book.
“I’m very blessed and I feel very lucky to have set my life up this way and to live where I do.”
