Artist and president of The Gallery Mt Macedon, Jo Hoyne, tells Elsie Lange about her connection to the town
Tell us a bit about you and what you do?
I’m an artist, living in Mt Macedon. I specialise in detailed pencil portraits. I [recently had] an exhibition up at The Gallery Mt Macedon featuring people with tattoos. I’m a retired secondary school teacher and I’m currently working in the Macedon Ranges Secondary School in a government-funded program to assist students affected by COVID-19 – which is basically all of them. I’ve got family who live not too away, so I get to take my grandchildren to school most day, and I’ve got four chickens who are running around the backyard at the moment.
I’m also president of The Gallery Mt Macedon and I participate in the Open Studios Mt Macedon program as well.
What’s your connection to Mt Macedon?
I’ve lived in Mt Macedon for 13 years, after raising our children in a suburb in Melbourne. I must admit I always wanted to live in the country, but for work reasons we were unable to do that until my husband retired. We fell in love with this area when we started visiting open gardens up here.
We realised that we could buy a property with our own beautiful garden. We found he perfect house and garden, just after the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires. We were very nervous about moving up into a place that could burn, but we did it anyway and never look back.
What do you like about where you live?
I love all the gardens, mine and everyone else’s. The natural settings and the fact that you can walk in just beautiful places every single day. I love the seasons, the weather, even the cold winters are pretty stimulating. I love the community, particularly the art community up here. It’s very vibrant and active. I love the fact that it’s close enough to the city that you can hop on the train and be in the city in under an hour and catch up with city friends.
What, if anything, would you change about where you live?
I couldn’t think of anything, and then I thought about the floods and the amount of water we’ve had in our backyard.
I would change the amount of water that flows down the golf course. When we get very heavy rains, like we’ve had over the last two weeks, we have a huge flood of water that comes down and there is four properties that have an awful lot of water that comes through into the backyards and front yards. We all have channels dug, but in heavy rain they are not enough.
Where is your favourite local place to spend time?
I love my studio, its set in our lovely garden and people visit when we have the open studio, which is pretty good.
I also love the Trading Post, which is my hangout spot. It’s a coffee shop, general store and post office up on Mt Macedon and it’s fabulous. It’s a real hub for the community, especially during lockdowns, when there were was nothing else open.
I love the Mt Macedon Cross, as well. As a local you can get there very early in the morning on a foggy day and it’s amazing.
Tell us something people would be surprised to know about you.
I’ve been learning French on and off since my school days. I am really bad at it, I’m hopeless at learning a language, but every now and then I do it again. I love watching French movies or series, such as Call My Agent.
