In October 2021, I started six months long service leave.  I'd been working more than thirty years and had never had such a long break.

Apart from taking lots of photos and visiting my mum and dad in Queensland, I had no firm plans.  Mainly, I just wanted to stop and see what it felt like.

Stopping started slowly.

About a fortnight in, I checked in at a very nice airbnb place not far from mum and dad's.  Having already bought the sort of groceries I'd buy at home, I spent an hour or so unpacking all the gear and establishing all the connections that I'd packed and disconnected a day earlier in Darwin. 

And soon enough I'd settled into the routines that shaped me.  

One of those routines was cycling every few hours through a dozen or so websites - making sure I wasn't missing anything.  (I very rarely was.)

The websites included an online real estate site.  I'd been visiting it on and off for years in the search for the perfect bush block.  Something ticking all the boxes - unspoilt, permanent swimmable water, close-ish to Darwin and affordable - had (somehow!) proven elusive.

About a year earlier, we had narrowly missed out on one contender - which was stunning but lacked permanent water.  It had been on the market for more than a year and we'd inspected it many times.  We umm'd and ahh'd for ages about making an offer - doing our best to come up with new reasons not to buy it.  And when, finally, we bit the bullet, someone else also did (and offered slightly more).

Nothing else had come close, so I was a bit surprised when my idle online scrolling turned up this ad:

"Eighty Eight Acres - Pristine* Rain-Forest - Well Located - Permanent Water - Orchard

Thirty five hectares of very old rain forest, close to Litchfield National Park... The bitumen stops outside our main entrance. All but the home paddock is covered in tropical rain forest and other native* trees. The tropical rain forest pre-dates the eucalypts, and is a remnant of an era when the Top End was mainly wetlands. The property is one of the few remaining examples of tropical rain forest in private hands. A tributary of the Little Finnis River runs through the valley, and there is a deep spring fed billabong that has never run dry. The rain forest supports native birds, possums, wallabies, lizards and the occasional fresh* water croc. There is a mango orchard of around sixty trees, which provides a small income. The mangoes are allowed to ripen on the trees, and are sold dehydrated or frozen. Other fruit trees have been planted close to the bush shack built near to the main road. The shack has a bathroom, kitchen, and a bedroom with an air conditioner..."

[* the asterisks denote parts of the ad that could perhaps have been expressed differently.]

The photos with the ad seemed to back up the description.

After a few inspections we offered the asking price.  It turned out this was only half the task; the owner only accepted once she was sure we were the right people.

And so, about 10 weeks into my leave, we became the owners of 730 Miles Road, Eva Valley. 

Here's what it looks like from the sky.  (Our place is to the right of the purple line and I've included the imaginative names we've come up with for the four corners):

The shack we now call our home away from home is right in the middle of the cleared area near corner 1.  The other visible structures are a mixture of sheds and never-finished building projects.  The mango trees are also visible in that area.

The place immediately to the West belongs to Trevor.  Parts of it are very similar to ours, but he's got many more mango trees (and so, less bush).  Trevor's a fascinating bloke, worthy of a separate blog post (or several).  His claims to fame include having been on Grand Designs Australia (for a project at Lake Bennett that didn't end well).  He's also the local snake catcher.  He and his dogs regularly detain feral pigs, which he feeds to his substantial collection of 'pet' saltwater and freshwater crocodiles.  (The main croc pens are beside the two white dots very close to the boundary with our place.)

To our north is a large mango farm.  Its south western and south eastern extremities correspond with our corners 1 and 2.  It is bisected by a very large dammed area.  Miles Road runs across the causeway which forms the dam.  Although it is not a natural water feature, it very much resembles a Top End wetland.  It hold water most of the year and is often teeming with birds.

The purchase of the block was followed by another, even bigger, development.

In our first month or so at Eva Valley we came to realise the scale of the task we'd taken on.

My dream had originally been for a weekend retreat; but it was pretty clear that more than weekends would be needed if we were to give the block the attention it needed.

All of sudden, we had an 80 acre backyard.  Even though most of it was uncleared, there was still the equivalent of many (very bumpy) football fields to mow every few weeks (in the Wet at least).  And there was the 'fleet' of honest, but tired, farm machinery (quad bike, ride-on mowers, brush cutters) to repair and maintain.

And then there were the weeds.  Although we knew there were problems, we had no real idea of the extent.   And the more we explored the block, the more we found.  (I've done a separate post about snake weed, the main culprit.)

We could possibly have paid someone to do the necessary work, but I didn't want that.  The more time I was spending there, the more I loved the place and the more I came to like the feeling that it was our responsibility.  (That feeling is still a huge motivator 18 months down the track.)

So I quit my day job.

It was a very good, very well-paid, job (best I'd ever had); but I was close to my 'best before' date - in fact, when I went in to the office and logged on to write my resignation notice, I was reminded that I'd actually done a draft resignation letter before I decided to take my long service leave.

Had we known - back in November 2021 - everything we came to learn about the block, I think there's a good chance we'd have talked ourselves out of it.

But - in a marked departure from previous form - we'd thrown caution to the wind.

I'm so glad we did.  I have no idea of how this adventure will end; but for the moment, I am happy in a life that has been turned upside-down.