A growing history

Different elements in Chris Sypher’s garden combine to tell a story of the Central Queensland highlands.

Story + Photos Mandy McKeesick

The dirt road gently ascends across black-soil pastures and rises a gravel ridge to Sunny Plains, home to Chris Sypher and Tony Hoch, 10 minutes east of Clermont in Central Queensland. At the apex, to the left, visitors are greeted by a grass tree constructed from scrap metal, a massive quartz boulder and a paperbark tree. To the right is a line of baby narrow-leaved bottle trees. Further glimpses reveal red, metallic Anzac poppies adorning a wooden gate and barbed-wire balls balanced on old posts, set among ornamental grasses and framed by callistemons and a jasmine arch.

All elements of this garden reflect Central Queensland, from the iconic bottle trees and plants selected for a temperamental climate, to the region’s history and artists.

Chris has lived at Sunny Plains, which was one of the original Clermont properties that has been reduced to 46ha, since 1997. “When I got here, the house was covered in bougainvillea to a point you could only see the windows, and rats were making tunnels in it from the tanks to the house. Snakes were everywhere,” she says. “It was a jungle.”

Chris set about carving a garden (and the house) from the jungle, ripping out bougainvillea and encroaching cypress pine and black wattle.