Love is in the airwaves for Terry Hansen

Radio host Terry Hansen and wife Julie are now a part of Brisbane as they enjoy the space of their Tarragindi home.

Terry Hansen relaxes in the back yard of his home in Tarragindi Picture: Glenn Hunt

Brisbane residents have been welcoming the voice of radio host Terry Hansen into their living rooms, cars and workplaces for more than a decade.

Rejoining the breakfast team at 97.3 in January after a year and a half off air, Hansen, or Tez as he is better known, is once again getting used to an early alarm and the commute to the office from the home he shares with wife Julie in the southside suburb of Tarragindi.

He and Julie bought the redbrick home in 2001 after moving out of their one-bedroom, loft-style apartment in Sydney where they were living with a toddler and baby. Almost two decades later, the couple are getting used to being empty-nesters, with both kids now grown up, living together and studying in Melbourne.

“Nineteen years ago, we moved up from the middle of Sydney in Woolloomooloo. We had bars on our windows and electronic gates,” Hansen says with a laugh.

The couple almost didn’t walk into the place they now call home, turned off by the sickly coloured brown, double-brick exterior in the subtropical climate. Ultimately, it was the size of the almost quarter-acre block that won them over.

“I thought, if I’m going to live here (Brisbane), then I want a Queenslander,” Julie says. “But I think living in a loft apartment for so long, when we walked out the back we just went, ‘that will be so great for the kids’.”

An interior of Terry and Julie Hansen’s Tarragindi home Picture: Glenn Hunt

Ten years ago, the family gave the home what they call a “chiropractic renovation”, removing much of the middle section that housed the laundry and kitchen and configuring it into a more functional design.

The large kitchen, with its central island benchtop, is perfect for the collaborative potluck-styled Christmases the Hansons hold, with the guest list often ticking past 25 people. The large windows that face out towards the sprawling back yard full of almost a dozen pine trees slide open to connect the indoors to an outdoor barbecue servery and relaxation space.

It is obvious the home belongs to performers. Many of the children’s books on display in the front living room have been adapted over the years into plays and performances, while costumes lay across a bed in the spare bedroom. Julie, who is also an actor and producer, shares her at-home studio with large props and staging that lay pressed against the wall.

Plenty of well wishes at Terry and Julie Hansen’s Tarragindi home Picture: Glenn Hunt

Terry used his year off the airwaves to get stuck into other projects and opportunities, travelling to perform stand-up comedy and producing theatre. He had never expected to be back on the breakfast round after surprising many when he quit on air in June 2018 to focus on his family.

But it was a homecoming for the radio veteran, reuniting with the long-time team of Robin Bailey and Bob Gallagher.

“I’m energised by the fact that I’m not doing anything new and that I had a chance to go back to all of the things that I do, wear all my hats, and get refreshed by them,” Hansen says.

“Breakfast radio doesn’t belong to the breakfast radio team. It belongs to everyone’s drive to work and to everyone’s morning, which comes with great, great possibility.

“As a comedian, I get an opportunity to interpret the city every day, which is just wonderful, it’s a gift. But, it also means that the audience end up with an encyclopaedic knowledge about our lives because we share everything.”

Hansen also spent a lot of time socialising and growing his men’s fitness group, The Dadbods, which he still takes part in of an evening. His small outdoor gym is under the shadow of the entrance sign, which originally hung at the former clubhouse of the Brisbane Broncos, another nod to his love of the river city.

While the home is a little quieter now, the Hansens don’t plan on moving. Radio anecdotes are still being made through visits from their great-nephew, whose artwork is spread around the house.