{"id":20181,"date":"2025-07-10T12:29:42","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T02:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/?p=20181"},"modified":"2025-07-10T12:40:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T02:40:17","slug":"everything-shipshape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/country-living\/everything-shipshape\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Shipshape"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A NSW couple have entered an exciting new phase of life in the Rolling Green Hills of the Northern Rivers District.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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It was meant to be a downsize. When Janine Cullen and her partner, Gordon Critcher, set out to look for a new home after decades of living in the Wollongong beachside suburb of Woonona, they were looking for a small house with a view and less maintenance than their family home. Their search took them from Forster on the NSW Mid-North Coast to Cairns in far-north Queensland. Having rejected every place they visited \u2014 too hot, too busy, too isolated \u2014 they were on the way back to the NSW South Coast<\/a> when they stopped at Lennox Head<\/a> for lunch with friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAs it turned out, our friends\u2019 parents were moving from their hinterland home, so we went to have a look,\u201d Janine recalls. \u201cWhile we were up there, we saw a few other places including this property at Tuckombil on the site of a former nursery. We were in love with it before we\u2019d reached the end of the driveway.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


It bore no resemblance to what they\u2019d been looking for. The five-acre (2.2-hectare) block came with an extensive orchard amid masses of other trees, sprawling lawns and a huge double-storey house built in the shape of an upturned ship\u2019s hull crowned with a widow\u2019s watch for views across the rolling green of the Northern Rivers hills. \u201cThe owner, Alan Ellis, had been a luxury boat builder and he and his wife, Sue, designed their house with a nautical feel,\u201d Gordon says. \u201cAlan was the project manager and it\u2019s got the same build quality as a boat \u2014 nothing leaks or squeaks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gordon, whose CV includes stints as a fire fighter, furniture, sail and saddle maker and blind and awning business owner \u2014 all of which require great attention to detail \u2014 says the house is so well engineered, it\u2019s virtually no maintenance. The same can\u2019t be said for the garden, which requires considerable attention, particularly since Janine has decided to exchange her busy corporate and philanthropic life for growing fruit and vegetables and preserving and pickling the surplus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Janine\u2019s career began as a cadet journalist on the Illawarra Mercury, which is where she met her first husband, fellow journalist Peter Cullen. Sadly, Peter passed away in 2000. Janine continued her career working for ABC radio, various TV channels, as well as writing for The Sun-Herald and AAP (Australian Associated Press) before branching out into her own communications business, which included marketing, media training and script-writing, producing and directing corporate videos. In her \u201cspare\u201d time, she worked for numerous charitable causes including Vision Australia, International Women\u2019s Day and One Door Illawarra mental health services. Her tireless efforts in both business and community were recognised with an OAM (Order of Australia Medal) in 2011 and being named Wollongong Citizen of the Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Although they may have embarked on a new chapter, Janine and Gordon say life is busier than ever. They\u2019ve had a constant stream of family and friends visiting, so the five bedrooms that may initially have seemed excessive are more than justified. Janine keeps her marketing hand in with a role with the Business Council of NSW and continues to work as a marketing manager for one of her long-term clients, Illawarra Diggers Aged Care. She\u2019s joined aqua classes at the local pool, is learning lots of home skills and is enjoying settling into a new community. Gordon is relishing time to indulge his passion for making and flying model helicopters, which he describes as \u201ctruly the hardest and most demanding thing I have done\u201d. They\u2019re getting to know their new \u2019hood, often via one of the two vintage cars parked in their sizeable garage\/workshops. \u201cI was driving on my father\u2019s lap from the age of eight,\u201d Gordon says. \u201cMy interest in cars has only grown with the years and I\u2019ve owned various vehicles at different times. At the moment, we have a 1928 A-model Ford and a 1925 Austin 7. We\u2019ve joined the Ballina Classic Vehicle Club and have great times enjoying the members\u2019 camaraderie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Janine says her vintage driving skills are currently limited to the driveway. \u201cThe accelerator is in the middle and the clutch and brake are on the right-hand side, so let\u2019s say I need a bit of practice,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I love the drives around the district. The beauty of being here is we\u2019re 20 minutes to everywhere. It\u2019s 20 minutes to Ballina, about 20 minutes to Byron Bay and 20 minutes to Lismore. Before we moved up here, I thought I\u2019d be making lots of use of the cheap airfares from Ballina to Sydney, but in the past year we\u2019ve been so busy, I\u2019ve only been back once for a charity event. In fact, we\u2019ve made the transition very easily. The funny thing is my parents moved from the beachfront to a farm in their retirement. I always thought that was a strange thing to have done. Now we\u2019ve done it ourselves, it doesn\u2019t seem odd at all.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A NSW couple have entered an exciting new phase of life in the Rolling Green Hills of the Northern Rivers District. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":20183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[161,336],"tags":[71,24,74,227],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20192,"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20181\/revisions\/20192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.australiancountry.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}