Christmas with the Cocquerels

The Weekly’s Style Director Mattie Cronan spends a leisurely day in the country with three generations of women from the one talented family.

- Mattie Cronan

In the countryside of Orange, NSW, sits a lovely homestead containing a lifetime of memories for the Cocquerel clan. It’s the place where, as youngsters, sisters Emilie, Elsa and Anna – who, along with their brother, Tom, are now successful actors – would let their imaginations run wild. “Orange was the backdrop to our creative adventures,” says Emilie, 29. Today, The Weekly has joined them and their mother, Georgia, 55, for a pre Christmas celebration at the home of their 82-year-old grandmother, Barbara Simpson.

In her youth, their grandmother was a celebrated Australian swimming champion. Along with fellow team member Dawn Fraser, Barbara was a member of the women’s freestyle relay team which, in 1956, set a world record in Sydney at the Olympic Selection Trials. “It was a time of great camaraderie I will never forget,” she says proudly.

Growing up with a French father and Australian mother, the Cocquerels frequently travelled overseas, but every holiday, mum Georgia would bring the brood home to Orange. Due to the 2020 pandemic, all five women have spent much of the year in the bush in isolation, waiting for the film industry to resurrect.