Musician Jodie O'Regan used to sing in bed as soon as she woke, in the shower, in the car, at work, on the way home and just before she went to sleep.
Singing was a way of life for the opera performer and music teacher until she suffered a devastating vocal chord injury while recovering from the flu.
"The surgeon said, 'you can talk quietly for five minutes of every hour and no singing whatsoever'," O'Regan tells AAP.
"I didn't know who I was."
So she went in search of a new home for her music, finding it inside the stone walls of a 149-year-old church in Burra, in South Australia's mid-north.
She and husband Emlyn bought the Old Redruth Methodist Church in 2022 and have turned it into a recording studio, music school and rehearsal space in the centre of the historic village.
Making the 1870s church their home and filling it with song has been a healing experience.
"You can hear your voice go all the way to the ceiling and the far walls and come back into your ears." O'Regan says, her words reverberating.
"It feels like the building comes to life."
The couple was among many Australians who sought out the charms of country churches after the peak of COVID-19.
Andy Liebelt manages the 73,000-strong Facebook group Churches for Sale Australia, where members share real estate listings, renovation plans and photos of their rambling church gardens.
The group started with about 1000 members, but grew exponentially during the pandemic as many people considered the potential of life outside the cities.
"They want the peace, they want the quiet, they just want to live a simple life," Mr Liebelt says.
"I just love it when people from our group buy churches being listed there.
"That happened recently and (the buyer) said 'we're going to grow a vegie patch out the back, we're going to put in an orchard, we just want a quiet life'."
Many churches are sold as rural populations fluctuate and congregations grow older in Australia's largely secular society.
Mr Liebelt, who has bought and restored two churches in country SA, including a bed and breakfast in Hahndorf, says many buyers come to consider themselves custodians.
"When these churches were built, everybody in that community would have gone there.
"You think about the wonderful things that happened there, the marriages, the baptisms, and even the funerals.
"It's that sense of belonging, that sense of community in these little country churches."
The history of St Matthew's Anglican church in East Kangaloon, in the NSW Southern Highlands, felt alive and well when Sophie Clerici bought it in 2019.
She could sense it when her family camped out in the 120-year-old church for a night soon after they purchased it from the reverend's widow.
"I was terrified, me who thought I was very zen and at one with the building," she says with a laugh.
"I had this very strong sense the building did not want me there."
That feeling only made her more determined to respectfully renovate the church, built with stone foundations, hardwood floors and local cedar.
"If you buy something that has historic significance to an area and it's managed to last, it's incredible," Ms Clerici says.
"It's a wooden building in the middle of the bush.
"When they built for God, they built properly."
The meticulously refurbished and cosy church is up for sale after Ms Clerici's husband, acclaimed cellist Umberto Clerici, was appointed chief conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.
The next owner will be the church's third and will take possession of a precious souvenir from the past: a rusted green tin toy plane unearthed during renovations.
"It would have been a very special thing for someone at a certain point," Ms Clerici says.
"Somebody had lost it under the floorboards at church.
"It's little things like that that contribute to the feeling you're in a space that has a big story."
