Back in about 1994 as I best recall two lovely ladies purchased one of my Post & Beam homes which they built in Buxton (about 100km north-east of Melbourne near Marysville). They engaged me to install the paved brick floor for them. Over the years we kept in contact and when I met my wife Noleen they invited us both up to their home for Sunday lunch. It was one of those brilliant Spring days and as we drove over the Black Spur and down into the Acheron Valley, I remarked to Noleen that I had forgotten how lovely this area was.

Over lunch we discussed property in the area and what the weather was like, etc. Most particularly Noleen and I have become heat intolerant as we have gotten older and when Judy & Margaret said - sure it got hot during Summer but it was very seldom that you didn’t need to sleep under a blanket at night - it seemed like we might have found Nirvana. We asked if they would keep an eye open for a block of land that might suit us. The requirements were pretty simple. About 10-20 acres (max) and access to permanent running water.

Over the next few months Judy & Margaret dutifully sent us details of some properties for sale in the area that broadly fitted our criteria. However, what became obvious was that anything with a river frontage was a cleared paddock - because it was prime river flat grazing country which had been cleared many years ago. This was not appealing at our age . We wanted to at least have some trees large enough that we could park our wheelchairs under as we moved into our dotage.

So after a couple of false starts Judy & Margaret rang with yet another false start. They rang excitedly one weekend to say they had just visited a local property which we just had to see!  It was magnificent!  Forget the rest!  However, the only problem was that an offer on the property had already been made (and it was a bit bigger than our requirements - 100 acres!).

So we felt relieved of the responsibility to do anything (and it didn't fit our basic brief anyway).

As providence would have it Margaret's 60th birthday happened a couple of months after this and they rang to invite us and also said that the offer on the land had fallen through. Well this land didn't suit us at all but we thought that we at least had to make the effort to visit it on our way to the 60th celebration otherwise they wouldn't keep looking for land for us.

Well we drove up onto the land and got out of our car and this is what we saw .......

The rest, as they say, is history.

To be continued ........