Australian Country Homes

PASTICHE OF THE PAST

The Brennan children know the drill. It just wouldn’t be a weekend in the country without a couple of property inspections. So when Sydney University health sciences professor Patrick and his wife, Elizabeth, headed to Mudgee for a weekend getaway, their children — John, Beth, Anna and Eoin — knew it would involve a few real estate windows.

“There was a collective eye roll when I suggested we look at another place,” Elizabeth recalls. “That was when the agent showed us Melrose Park. I knew the moment Patrick stood on the verandah and looked down the drive that he was interested.”

That was January 2015 and bywill recall that we first met the Brennans when we profiled the heritage-listed Kelvin back in 2016, four years after they had arrived in Australia from the UK. By that stage the self-confessed serial renovators were on their third property in Australia, having previously honed their skills on a farmhouse in Ireland, a Victorian terrace in Dublin, a Georgian house on the Norfolk/Suffolk border and a 15th-century villa in Tuscany.

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