44 Australian Country HOMES
luxury sportswear label and Bonnie
indulged her passion for painting in vivid
colour, the couple was on the cusp of
relocating to Florida for better education
opportunities for their now teenaged
children. A conversation with friends
diverted their path. “Our friends spoke
of Perth, and it seemed like a great sea
change,” Bonnie says. “So Paul and I came
for a visit and within three days we were
fi ling applications for visas.” Paul opened a
couple of stores for his clothing label and
Bonnie found inspiration for her art in
spades. They soon combined their talents
and opened Stories On The Wall, a gallery
and bespoke and recycled furniture space
in the historic village of Guildford, north
of Perth along the Swan River, where they
were living at the time.
But chance intervened again on a Sunday
afternoon drive. They’d just renovated a
cottage not far from their gallery, and had
no intention of moving. “Bonnie spotted
an open house sign on a side road,” Paul
explains. “She insisted that I make a U-turn,
and suddenly we were in front of a broken
picket fence with several huge gumtrees.
There was a yard with a wooden house way
back from the street. Bonnie and I looked
at each other and we knew this would be
our next home before even checking the
house. It was 5pm and the selling agent was
leaving. We told him we wanted to put an
off er on the house after fi ve minutes. He
did not believe us. We signed the off er the
following day.” It’s exactly the kind of carpe
diem move that typifi es their globe-trotting
life together.
Their many years living abroad in homesThese pages: Shots recall Bonnie’s modelling days in Chicago, New York and Paris, but now she’s
very much at home in her studio and the house that’s packed with books and art. The couple has
done extensive work in the garden, adding colourful f lowers, trees and meandering pathways.