Apartment Envy With Roomies Jacinta and Amina

Apartment Envy With Roomies Jacinta and Amina

Flatmates Jacinta Moore and Amina McPhee, and their pets Coco and Poppy, crack open the door to their dishy Coburg apartment.

Four Walls

Amina: We moved into our apartment in Coburg a little over a year ago. It is on a large block that it also shares with a heritage-listed house. Our neighbourhood is very peaceful, with friendly neighbours and an amazingly diverse range of houses and gardens.

By Day

Jacinta: Amina is a jeweller, gemmologist and registered jewellery valuer. She works in a fancy antique jewellery store and also makes her own contemporary jewellery. I work as a stylist and photographer, do consultancy work with a private art dealer, and also work part-time as an art technician at a local high school. We’re both pretty busy, but never bored.

By Night

Jacinta: We take eating, sleeping and relaxing very seriously around here. Most nights we share a meal with our friends and next-door neighbours Ben and April. Each of us cook for everyone once a week, so we eat very well very often. To be honest, our long dinners and increasingly early bedtime doesn’t leave time for much else!

Playing Favourites

Jacinta: I really, really love the abstract painting above the bookcase in our lounge room, by my friend Ruby Hoppen. I received it as part of a trade, though I’m still yet to deliver on my part of the deal (sorry, Ruby)! I also love the amazing collage above my bed by my friend, Ben Pell. It’s nice to have such clever friends.

Amina: My dressing table that my mother gave to me, all of my special objects and jewellery live there. Also I have a small, round green ceramic sculpture that I carried all the way back from Nicaragua by a local artist called Miguel Calero.

Four Paws

Jacinta: Coco is Amina’s cat. She is a Bengal, and is eight years old. Coco is the boss of the house (the whole block, actually!), is very loud, talkative, extremely intelligent, and will even sit on command if there’s a good enough reward on offer. Poppy is my Italian Greyhound, and is also eight. She spends the majority of her life sleeping in the warmest spot she can find which, alas, is usually my bed. She is very affectionate and silly and cute.

Best Room in the House

Jacinta: We both unanimously pick the bathroom, in all its pink and green madness. I’m so glad it has managed to remain intact and in relatively good condition for 60-odd years.

Fast Five

Fave cereal Jacinta: Porridge! While not technically a cereal, I’ve eaten a bowl every morning for the best part of the year.

Fave dance-floor hit Amina: Anything from Salt ‘N’ Pepa!

Fave childhood book Jacinta: There’s a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake. I was really into that book as a little kid.

Fave Melbourne hideaway Jacinta: The Rhododendron Gardens in Olinda, and any excuse to visit the Melbourne Zoo.

Fave TV series Jacinta: Of all time – The Wire. Recently – The Mindy Project.

Original article and pictures take www.yenmag.net site