The actual purchase of the block caused no qualms . We were afforded some moments of amusement by our lawyer , who confessed that he had never had anything to do with the sale of a rural property as distinct from a city one , he being a city gent , and more used to other types of legal transactions anyway . He took quite a time but he made no errors . Wryly he told us that the necessary searches involved more areas to be explored than he had though possible , and in the end he actually thanked us for giving him what was a novel experience.

So , there was our bush block , not exactly pristine , but very much to our taste . Some seventy to a hundred years before , many of the trees must have been felled , but there was now a fine stand of casuarina , eucalypt , and alas , lantana .

We made a couple of trips to it from Sydney soon after the purchase , mostly for the purposes of exploration . Since the property had been sold off from a one hundred acre block , the northern boundary had no fence . That was remedied soon , as the brother of the vendor , being an agricultural sort of bloke in his spare time from his day job , was willing to do the labour of fencing if we paid for the cost of the materials . That was very welcome to me . I had in the past built fences , but I did not have either the equipment such as tractors with mechanical post hole digger attachments , which would be needed for setting in over eighty fence posts and strainers , nor yet the time and energy or indeed strength to expend .

We also familiarised ourselves with the proportions of the block by walking over it many times. The western boundary was the shortest , and to our joy it passed to the west of a magnificent red gum , with a twelve meter girth , its bark scarred by the possums that must have been climbing it for years . It also crossed the widest part of an intermittent stream that ran from the south through the corner of the block.

That stream was a source of great pleasure . It was not always full , but it had some deepish pools of clean water , that fed the trees and plants of an area that was similar to rainforest . The mosses , the maidenhair fern , the native hibiscus and the huge ropes of clematis winding through the upper branches of the taller gums made it a favourite place for many birds , and in the hot weather , a sanctuary for kangaroos and pretty-face wallabies. The dam overflow from its small spillway and the general seepage fed it amply.

The dam was the second earliest improvement after the fence . We were extremely lucky , for the contractor who excavated the dam , unlike the one who made one for a neighbour , was an expert . The gully conformation was perfect , the impermeable base layer was exactly the right material for bulldozering up to a strong wall , and we ended up with a dam that was over twelve metres deep , holding about a million gallons of clean cold water . Not being a broad shallow dam like so many around the area , which were much more prone to evaporation in the hot summers , it would be most unlikely ever to dry up.

That dam soon attracted ducks , and it was not all that long before the bulrushes that appeared magically on the banks made a nesting haven for them My only disappointment was that it was really too steep sided with slippery clay to afford safe swimming .

With water supplied , and the power run in from a transformer situated on the big power line which ended in the neighbouring block , the next step had to be getting a house built .

For this we we again fortunate . From the ridge road on the eastern side of the block there was a fairly level area about a hundred meters long , parallel to the road , and fifty meters broad , which would make an ideal house site , and later provide room for the development of an orchard .

And so , we were ready to build the house for the rural retreat.