Sally Warriner

Sally Warriner’s lived on a cattle station, treated patients in Africa,
but Byron Bay has her heart

For 25 years author Sally Warriner lived on an outback cattle station running a huge homestead, raising a family, entertaining guests, nursing injured jackaroos from a bush clinic, counselling troubled souls and planning the late Kerry Packer’s New Year’s Eve parties.
Her home was Newcastle Waters, a sprawling 1033,100ha breeding property in the west Barkly region of the Northern Territory, where she lived with husband Ken, the general manager of Consolidated Pastoral Company.
Divorced in 2001, she moved to Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point, and at 50 resumed her nursing career and retrained to work for Medecins Sans Frontieres – completing missions in Sierra Leone, Sudan and Bhutan.
In 2007 she purchased an old house in Byron Bay as an investment after searching for six months.

“It was almost a knockdown job, but I rented it out for six years to a motley group of what seemed like at times about 20 surfers, all of whom paid their rent on time and were really good blokes,” Warriner says.
She made it her home in 2014 and decided to renovate rather than knock it down, as it had “good bones”.
Warriner describes her house as happy, bright and fun, and a great base for family and friends to discover the area.
It is also where she wrote her recently published book, Not Just the Wife of the General Manager (published by Hardie Grant), a cheeky memoir of her life in the outback and a tribute to the many unsung women like her, whose contributions were often overlooked.
“I decided to write a book because I felt I had an interesting story to tell, had lived an extraordinary and adventurous life, and so many people know nothing about life in the outback,” Warriner says.
“I wrote it while working on the frontline, testing then vaccinating for Covid, from 2020 for nearly two years during lockdowns, and no one is more surprised than I am at how well it has sold.”

Fresh from a whirlwind book launch tour, Warriner is pleased to be back home.
“Living in Byron is quite different in every way from anywhere I have lived before, but I have found my happy place,” she says.
“I love the view over Broken Head, the sun beaming in from the north, the bright colours of my furnishings, and the proximity to everywhere.
“I can go to the theatre, the movies, listen to music at any of the four pubs, go to restaurants and visit friends in town all within a five-minute drive, or up in the hills within a 20-minute drive through the most wonderful green grazing country and pretty villages dotted around the surrounding areas.”
Inside her house, it’s a riot of colour with striking lime and blue hues that work with her furniture and decor.

“Much of my furniture travelled with me from Brisbane and I have had the same sofa covers for 20 years – the fabric was handpainted by Indigenous artists in Perth and has passed the test of time,” she says.
“Some of my Indigenous art was painted by friends in the Malinga community on Newcastle Waters, and Patrick Hockey was a great friend who used to visit me there and I have some wonderful pencil drawings he did for me on his regular trips out bush.
“I have gathered many artefacts over the years from the Kimberley, where my sister Susan Bradley lives and is an avid art collector. So I would say that my favourite possessions have been so for a very long time.
“I have never felt the need to buy anything more – aside from the fact I don’t have any more wall space.”

Country Style December 2022