Jamie Durie has been engaged to model and singer Ameka Jane since early 2021, and their daughter Beau had a question for Jamie recently.
“My little girl did ask the other day if she could be the flower girl,” Jamie tells TV WEEK. “That was a fun moment.”
So are the couple making wedding plans?
“When the dust settles, you never know,” Jamie, 56, says. “I think the most important thing is to get a roof over their heads to begin with, and then growing enough food that we can operate independently on the farm.”
Jamie, who’s also dad to young son Nash with Ameka, as well as adult daughter Taylor from a previous relationship, is sharing his journey of getting a roof over his family’s heads on Jamie Durie’s Future House. The first season of the show, which looks at different ways of tackling Australia’s housing crisis, finished with Jamie and family walking around their new – but unfinished – home on their farm in northern New South Wales.
“Season two will most certainly show our brand-new 3D-concrete-printed house in its full glory, with gardens, rooftop gardens, swimming pools and a 600-square-metre organic vegetable garden that will quite simply make Australia salivate,” Jamie says. “My three-year-old boy Nash and my five-year-old little girl Beau are planting this veggie patch out with me and learning where food comes from and, quite frankly, having a ball doing it.
“I have to say, they’ve reached an age now where I cannot bear to be without them for one night.”
Jamie, who got his start in entertainment with male dance troupe Manpower, has been a familiar face on Australian television for more than 25 years. After fronting Backyard Blitz and The Block, he went on to make his mark on US TV, becoming a favourite of Oprah Winfrey.
His farm is a long way from the set of Oprah’s top-rating talk show. So does he miss that time of his life at all?
“My eldest daughter still lives in the US – and I’ll never forget my time with Oprah,” he says. “I spent five years contracted to her and her team and it was definitely one of the highlights of my career. But I will say I’ve never been happier than at this point in my career and being back in Australia with my hands in the earth.”
He says working on TV shows in two countries at the same time was “incredibly stressful but incredibly exciting”.
“I had a lot of energy in my thirties – not that I have much less now – but I’m glad that I got to tick that box,” he adds.
“I’ve scratched that itch now. I don’t really have any questions in my mind or yearnings to get back there.”
Jamie studied horticulture and landscape design before making the move into lifestyle TV. But he says when it comes to farming, he’s “not an expert”.
“My time on the farm is a little bit like Clarkson’s Farm,” he says. “I make the odd mistake here and there and I don’t mind having a laugh at myself.”
What he does know is that he’s loving the opportunity to work outdoors again.
“This show has brought me back to the earth, where Australia knows me, where they grew up with me. And that, for me, has been really amazing, and even better to be able to share this with my young kids.”
Before their 3D-printed house on the farm, Jamie and Ameka built a sustainable luxury home on Sydney’s northern beaches, as seen in the series Growing Home. So does Jamie plan to build any more homes for his family after this?
“No, I think I’ve finished,” he says. “I think the two homes that we’ve built over the last five years have taken a lot out of us, but it’s also been incredibly fulfilling for us to be able to showcase some really beautiful architecture and some great sustainability.”
Spending so many years building the two houses has meant that Beau and Nash have grown up on building sites – and they’ve loved it.
“The other day they were heading off to preschool and I turned around and both of them had gone into their rooms and put on high-vis workwear,” Jamie tells. “And I’m like, ‘Hey guys, don’t you reckon this is a little over the top? We’re not going to the build site.’ They call our house ‘the build site’, by the way. I’m like, ‘The house is finished now.’
“They didn’t take it off. There were tantrums and, ‘No, no, no, I want to wear this!’”
Jamie, who spent his childhood in Tom Price in Western Australia and on Queensland’s Gold Coast, says his kids are “not precious”, and he likes that.
“They don’t mind getting their hands dirty. And I think being on the farm’s been amazing for them… just spending more time outdoors where I grew up and where I think kids need to return to.”
The 72-acre farm has a river running through it that’s “filled with fish and platypus”. There are also mountain ridges for the family to go horseriding through.
“I’m even secretly arranging a little Christmas present for my daughter – and it might resemble a little white pony!” Jamie says.
So what’s up next for Jamie, now that he’s done with building homes for his family in front of the TV cameras?
“I do have many more projects on the go, on the farm, and they’re highly ambitious,” he says. “But that’s just me. I’m never going to stop creating.”
Working on projects on the farm means Jamie gets to stay near Beau and Nash.
“I think us creating stuff in the garden on the farm is nirvana for me.”
Watch Jamie Durie’s Future House on Tuesday at 8.30pm on the Nine Network or on 9Now.
