This story is part of the May 26 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories . Darren Palmer is an interior designer and judge on The Block .
Here, the 46-year-old shares why he felt safer around women growing up, the process it took to come out to his entire family and why he and his husband got married twice. Being gay in the early ’90s in rural Queensland was not easy. Nothing made sense until I came out when I was 19.
Credit: Niki Schuch My paternal grandmother , Iris, was an avid reader with a fierce intellect who lived in Far North Queensland. She had two children before my grandfather left for World War II, and four more after he returned. She passed away when I was in my late 20s.
My maternal grandmother, Nan [Mary], is 95 and lives in Rockhampton. She raised five children, and her home was always welcoming and safe. Our family would visit for 10 days at a time and come back overfed and happy.
Nan also went by the name Topsy, a nickname since childhood, and came from a family of cotton farmers. She loved cooking and making biscuits. She was a bit of a hoarder – her home was tidy but packed with stuff and she stored things under the house.
I was born in Gladstone, Queensland, and lived there for my first 17 years. It’s an industrial port – Dad [Selwyn] was a boilermaker and there are no interior designers around! Mum [Rosie] was the one who inspired me to pursue interior design. She had cool furniture from the 1980s and seeing how well she put our home together .