You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl. That's certainly the case for Sydney food entrepreneur Simmone Logue, who keeps one foot in the bush with the historic homestead she owns with her twin sister, Joanna, near Oberon in the NSW central tablelands.
Simmone has enjoyed a long career as a cook, caterer to all manner of high-flying clients and now purveyor of fine foods to several national food markets. For the past 30 years, she and Joey, as she affectionately dubs her accomplished artist twin, have spent every available break at Essington Park, an 1860 two-storey homestead with a detached cottage that was once the schoolhouse for the original station, shearers’ quarters and, of course, a vegie garden and orchard.
“As generations of Australian artists have done, Joey was out here taking in the landscape as inspiration for her painting,” Simmone says. “She spotted a ‘For Sale’ sign on the fence and pretty much instantly knew we had to buy it. Once you've got cow poo on your boots, it's hard to shake it off, and Essington became our
