Rachel Ward is making coffee, preparing a shoulder of lamb for dinner and washing up. At the same time, she’s checking that her cows are settling on the banks of the dam behind the house – their gentle mooing a soothing soundtrack – and disappears every so often to help with the horses in the paddock out the front. Husband Bryan Brown wanders in from the verandah for a cup of tea before settling at the dining table and, as we chat, both he and Rachel transform into twinkly-eyed, besotted grandparents when Anouk, two, and Zan, four, run past barefoot and half-dressed.
“Who would have guessed being a grandparent is so much fun,” says Rachel. “I’m Mopey and he’s Grandpa.”
The sun-kissed white-haired siblings are the children of Rachel and Bryan’s youngest daughter, actor/businesswoman Matilda Brown, and her husband, chef Scott Gooding.
Following on behind the kids is Matilda with a tutu and a T-shirt to dress them in. Scott, meanwhile, has something sizzling in a skillet on the cooktop and later the couple disappears to prepare for an alfresco photo shoot on the farm for an upcoming cookery book, a companion to their burgeoning paddock-to-plate, ready-meal venture.
It sounds chaotic, but it’s not. Rather, there’s a bucolic aura that permeates this typical day at the family farm in the Nambucca Valley of New South Wales. As the hours wear on, the family members cross paths, seemingly organically, while also doing their own thing.
This sense of independent togetherness is echoed in the yin and yang of Bryan and Rachel’s relationship. Days can be very different for the couple, especially at the moment, and that’s as it should be, notes Rachel. “We’re definitely not co-dependent.”
While both are still involved in filmmaking, Bryan has just finished his debut novel, a taut, character-driven crime thriller, which we’ll come to, and Rachel has spent the past three years hurling herself headlong into converting this place – which
