Tracey's Country Kitchen - Our Bridgetown Story

Tracey's Country Kitchen - Our Bridgetown Story A slower life in the beautiful South West of WA.

Join Tracey and Stephen as we embrace retirement with nourishing food, preserving, gardening, bush walks, nature, and simple country living.

You guys are probably going to think I’m so weird but I thought I’d post a few pictures of my nearly 22 year-old home th...
02/08/2026

You guys are probably going to think I’m so weird but I thought I’d post a few pictures of my nearly 22 year-old home that has been cleaned almost exclusively with zero commercial cleaners.

Seeing as we are going to put the home on the market next year 😢 I have started looking at the place through the lens of a buyer rather than someone who lives here and loves the place.

I have actually been really pleased with how well the old duck has kept up appearances!

In the spirit of complete transparency, we have replaced the bathroom taps years ago and the toilets were replaced years ago as well so they are not 22 years old, and we have had the bathroom tiles regrouted probably twice over 22 years, the last time several years ago but I can’t remember when.

Everything else is as it was when we built the house. All of the sinks, bathroom basins, cabinetry, shower screens, mirrors, most of the tapware and stainless steel are all 22 years old.

I don’t use anything other than pretty much vinegar and bicarb to clean the place with the occasional essential oil or some citric acid for the toilet.

Once again in the spirit of full transparency, I will give the showers a bit of an Exit Mould every now and then if they have gotten away from me but this is very rare as I can’t stand the smell of it! So I just have to keep on top of the showers!

Apparently this way of living has saved around 60 litres of chemicals going into the environment and my family's bodies, that's around 1200 litres over the time we've lived here!

This makes me feel really good, and if nothing else should show people that the simplest of cleaning procedures can be just as effective and hygienic as all of the rubbish they pitch to you on the supermarket ads.

We don't use stove cleaners, fridge cleaners, bench cleaners, air fresheners, toilet cleaners, shower cleaners, BBQ cleaners, bleaches, fabric softeners, perfumes, aftershaves (except the boys!), complicated skin care routines (I'm still just using my old almond or coconut oil mainly) and our washing liquids, detergents, shampoos etc are all enviro products safe for grey water systems.

As it’s so happens, this is great training for when we move to Bridgetown because I will not have to change anything about the way we clean the place to support the fact that we will be using a biolytic converter for our waste as well. 🤩 🏡

As I say a bit of a strange post, but I am really proud of this beautiful old home and the way she’s kept up appearances so well.

Next step in the mobile businesswoman practicality (and beautification) project, a wireless mouse, keyboard and mousepad...
30/07/2026

Next step in the mobile businesswoman practicality (and beautification) project, a wireless mouse, keyboard and mousepad. ⌨️

I thought “why go for the standard black when you can go pink??” And although pink is not one of my favourite colours, not gonna lie, I absolutely LOVE this set. 🩷🩷🩷

Wait til you see the personalised carry bag I’ve ordered for myself as an early birthday present (lets just say it wasn’t cheap….), you’ll either love it or hate it. 😆

And note the coffee cup. Not quite up to working in a café like a hipster yet and I don’t think I ever will be. I prefer to keep my café visits for, well, drinking coffee. ☕️

The next big step in our move to Bridgetown, getting myself a laptop so I can work in the year between the house settlem...
26/07/2026

The next big step in our move to Bridgetown, getting myself a laptop so I can work in the year between the house settlement and us moving down for good. 💻 👍

For those who are new to the page, we will be settling on the Bridgetown House on December 10, but we can’t move down till the end of 2027 when my husband fully retires and we get the kids sorted in their new home.

This means that we will be spending a week a month down in Bridgetown looking after the new house and three weeks in the house in Ellenbrook.

I didn’t want to put my business on hold for essentially a quarter of the year so the best way we could manage this is if I got myself a laptop with all of my bits downloaded on it and I could even do online consults if I needed to. ☎️

I am super proud of myself as I am extremely computer illiterate, and yet I managed to set up the whole laptop, connect to my current email address, download Facebook, Rener website, and Cliniko and put them all as shortcuts on the home screen! 🙌

I still need my trusty IT guy to help download my working emails and the rest of the stuff I need for work and then I’ll be good to go. 🙏

I’ve never had a laptop before, so I am feeling very hip and cool! 😎

I love this pic, it arrived in my newsfeed almost the day after I announced on Facebook our move to Bridgetown and it sp...
15/07/2026

I love this pic, it arrived in my newsfeed almost the day after I announced on Facebook our move to Bridgetown and it spoke to me on every level. 🙏

Not so sure about “achieving a great amount of success” but, I’m more about giving myself the best chance at being who I really feel I am at my core, and I can’t do that here.

We have loved every second of living in Ellenbrook, I feel like I’ve grown up here, as in become an adult, because this is where we brought up our kids but to retire here seems almost like a death sentence to me, no offence to anyone or anything! 😂

Its just there would be nothing for me to do here! Or Stephen. I mean there’s only so much golf you can play and other than that what’s he going to do to fulfil himself?

I have been an “urban hippie” for almost as long as I can remember now, the bush has been calling me for decades which is why all of our little breaks have been down south, and Stephen spent many of his formative years with his siblings and uncle on his favourite grandparent’s farm in Mengha Tasmania. 🐄

Those were some of the happiest memories of his childhood so it seems only natural that we would both want to find some version of ourselves that has been missing for a long time.

I think he’ll be happy to have his little patch of land to work on and I’ll be happy to have my dream kitchen cooking all of the stuff grown on that little patch of land.

Plus, there are also SO MANY THINGS I want to do down there. Every week on the Bridgetown page they are offering something to do - a class, a course, a nature retreat, jewelry making, essential oil distilling, gardening techniques, some kind of hippie adventure, an arty thing, an animal caring-for type thing, a cooking or eating adventure that grabs me by the heart strings and makes me think “Oh my God I wish I was there now, I would sign up for that in a heartbeat!!!” 💓

I mean, it’s like they specifically curated a list of activities JUST for me! 😂

So, its not that the place you are in at the moment is bad, or your friends are holding you back, or your job is stifling you (although I do feel that is the case for a lot of people!), or even your family is taking up too much of your time and mental energy.

It is just that you can never be who you truly want to be, or the person that you feel that you truly are, with all of that HUGE weight of expectation and old baggage on you. If people know you to be a certain way, and you want to change, it is infinitely harder to do so.

That is why sometimes you need to break away. For your own good. 🙏 ❤️ 🪴 🌈

I received the wrong onions in my last order, they gave me baby onions instead of the normal sized ones and I thought “s...
13/07/2026

I received the wrong onions in my last order, they gave me baby onions instead of the normal sized ones and I thought “so what am I gonna do with these stupid little things? “ 😆

The thought of peeling and chopping four onions to make up for one did not appeal to me at all so I thought “I know, the boys love anything salted, brined or pickled so I’ll pickle them!”

And so here you are, easy peasy, now all I have to do is put them to bed for 4 to 6 weeks and they’ll be good to eat. 👏 🧅 ❤️

Okay first cheese trial completed! I have attached photos in order of instructions and a video of my favourite part, the...
07/07/2026

Okay first cheese trial completed! I have attached photos in order of instructions and a video of my favourite part, the cutting of the curds! Sounds like a great name for a movie….. 🍿

Anyway, you bring the milk up to temperature and I knew something was wrong when I stuck my finger in (clean!) and thought “this can’t be right, its too cold!!!” Trap for young players, I was looking at Farenheit instead of Celsius on the thermometer!!! Once I got that sorted life was a whole lot easier! 😆

I did all of the things in all of the orders and I thought I was too clever by half adding the tins of tomatoes instead of the “plate with water” on top to press it (turns out I WAS clever doing that much to my surprise, but even then I didn’t press for long enough it seems, more on that later...) and adding a towel over the sink to try and trap the temperature in as it needs to sit at 45 degrees for an amount of time to form curds.

That worked too, only had to top up with hot water once but not sure I even needed to do that as the temperature of the actual milk was still at 45 so who knows? 🤷‍♀️

Anyway, the funnest part was the cutting of the curds, but I would turn the volume down for that. The knife scrapes on the bottom of the pan and gives you the “nails down the blackboard” vibe (for those of us old enough to remember blackboards!) 😫

The finished product was mostly good but the edges were a little soft and it wasn’t that classic halloumi “squeaky”.

Research suggests it’s because I didn’t press it long enough to remove enough water to compress the proteins adequately. This is where recipes are good, but nothing beats actual experience. Anyway, another lesson in the memory banks and it’s an easy fix. 👍

Overall it still tasted good, cooked up really well and looked great. Eldest has a little bit and says “I don’t like the squeaky cheese anyway Trace, good effort for your first time!”. Sometimes, they go alright the kids. 🥹

How exciting, our first new piece of furniture for the Bridgey house has arrived! We only have 3 bedrooms and if our fri...
03/07/2026

How exciting, our first new piece of furniture for the Bridgey house has arrived!

We only have 3 bedrooms and if our friends, family or the boys come visit and/or maybe bring a guest we wanted access to four so we decided we’d get a really good quality sofa bed so we have the option of a fourth “bedroom”.

I really loved how simple the Koala lounges looked to assemble and the beds look super comfy, even a mattress topper and foam insert for the gaps so you don’t fall between the holes! 😂

The problem is because we will have a staggered move, and settlement is on December 10th 2026, our Ellenbrook home will be going on the market possibly spring next year (so it needs to be fully furnished) and us not moving down full time til late or the end of 2027, we are in a bit of a pickle living wise. 🥒

We also need to consider what the boys will be taking when they move out plus what we will not need and give away. It’s a lot to think about! 🤔

We are spending a week a month down there after settlement to keep the house running and making sure the garden is all good, plus I still need to fully furnish 2 other bedrooms so we can sort that later when we know our routine.

First thing’s first, I just need to make it liveable for us when we are there so we need somewhere to sleep, bathroom supplies and toiletries, kitchen and cooking/serving supplies, dog needs and bits and bobs so I am furiously writing lists at the moment, so much so that I have a master list and then my lists have lists! 📜

I figure the Koala comes in pieces we can take down so we at least have a couch and a bed to see us through til we get a routine happening. We can just take small boxes of all of the other things I mentioned before in our first trip down with the couch. Oh and the reason we bought it so early to be honest was so I could take advantage of the EOFY sales, $999 discount is nothing to sniff at! 💰

I chose the lovely olive green as it will go beautifully with the terracotta tiles and rammed earth walls plus easier to keep little muddy paws from not showing! 🐾

I am so excited we have our first official new house piece of kit! 🛋️ 🛌

Oh no, she hasn’t! Oh, yes she has! 👏 Apparently, according to the packaging, I am going to become an artisan cheese mak...
30/06/2026

Oh no, she hasn’t! Oh, yes she has! 👏

Apparently, according to the packaging, I am going to become an artisan cheese maker! 😆 

After speaking to a friend a few weekends ago, who was making her own halloumi, we had a chat about cheese making. She told me she got a cheese making kit in the mail and has been making some cheeses ever since.

Every cooking show I watch where they make cheese I think to myself “oh man that looks so beautiful!” I always think it looks so soporific, so calm, relaxing, rhythmic and hands-on. ✋

I thought that one day I might like to make cheese of my own, so I’ve had my little cottage cheese experiment that I shared a while back on my business page so I’m going to branch out a bit.

I’m going to start with the “squeaky cheese” - the halloumi - and go from there.

They can absolutely stick the cottage cheese recipe up their bum though to be honest. 😆 It’s got a prep time of 60 minutes, ready in 5 to 9 hours, and we have to use the calcium chloride, fresh cheese, culture, and the rennet!

The home made one I did recently was literally milk heated up and adding a bit of vinegar! I’m not in it to win awards, I just wanna make my own cheese! 😆

So, we’ll see how this goes. Starting with halloumi on the weekend. I’ll try and get the hang of the fresh cheeses first and then move onto my favorites like Parmesan and Romano if possible. Wish me luck.🍀

P.S. check out the names of the measuring sizes on the spoons, very definitely the way I roll!

29/06/2026

Hi there, welcome to my new page!

For those who have not been directed from my business page, my name is Tracey Walker and I am a qualified naturopath currently working out of Ellenbrook Perth, WA.

My husband and I are retiring end of 2027 (well, he is retiring, I am just moving my business online!) as we are starting a new life in Bridgetown, a stunning little pocket of fabulous scenery and quirky caring community-minded characters to live out the next phase of our lives.

We are leaving behind our two gorgeous adult sons who will be living together closer to town in a much funkier apartment than where they were in Ellenbrook and of course we leave behind 22 years of friends, family and community memories made through sport and naturopathy.

We are taking our gorgeous pooch though, Ace who is a labradoodle so we shall see how he likes his new digs!

I am a frustrated writer so I wanted to document our move down south, warts and all, starting from now. We have a lot to do to get ready in the year or so before we move down, probably about 12 months of which we may be spending a week a month down there whilst we get the house and kids ready up here.

There are SO MANY THINGS I want to do in Bridgetown, so many courses I want to go to, so many things I want to learn and so many areas where I think I can really contribute to the community so it should make for a wide and varied journal.

My main focus has always been, and will continue to be food, cooking, eating, gardening, sustainable living and basically just becoming a steward of the land, rather than a rabid consumer.

Oh and for the record, this is not my actual kitchen (yet!). It is an artists impression of the kitchen we are going to get when settlment hits, which is December 10 2026.

Exciting times are coming for the Walkers, and I would love any visitors - friends or clients - to pop in for a cuppa or a warm bowl of soup and home made crusty bread in front of the woodfired stove. 🔥

Address

8 Robinia Way
Bridgetown, WA
6255

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