All You Need Is Love

She speaks five languages and has studied pure maths. She’s performed on stage in front of thousands and is muse to iconic Australian rocker Jimmy Barnes. But it’s love that makes Jane Barnes’ world go around.

- Samantha Trenoweth

The first time I met Jane Barnes was in the kitchen of her rambling, white weatherboard farmhouse in Bowral, NSW. It was 1993, around the time her husband, Jimmy, released his sixth solo album, Heat. She wore expensive jeans and a little black tee, and the house smelt of wood smoke and freshly baked bread. Jane and her sister Jep were arranging immense platters of food on a kitchen island that seemed to stretch on forever. It needed to because she had a whole tribe of mouths to feed.

All four little Barneses – Mahalia, who was 11; Eliza-Jane (aka EJ), nine; Jackie, seven; and Elly-May, four – were skidding across polished floorboards in socked feet. A nanny and Jep’s toddlers, Jesse and Lily, were in hot pursuit. There was a band (or maybe two) recording in the studio downstairs with Jep’s husband, Mark “Diesel” Lizotte. And an old family friend was staying in the guest quarters, ostensibly to dry out.

Mid-afternoon there was a knock at the door and in strolled a couple of saffron-clad monks. Jane was trying to keep Jimmy on, if not the straight and narrow, at least the middle path, and the monastery at nearby Bundanoon had become part of this noisy, welcoming, eclectic family too.

On this particular day, it was a hullabaloo, but that was the way Jane liked it. Perhaps it channelled the spirit of the family compound in Bangkok where she spent her first five years, surrounded by the laughter of cousins, the love of aunties and uncles, and the aroma of chilli, lemongrass and galangal emanating from a dozen Thai kitchens.