There was a lot of pleasure in just travelling up to Kempsey simply to spend some time on the block . There was always something new to be found there : a couple of hidden gullies that we missed the first few times , a new tree like none I had ever seen before , and an interesting change in the vegetation as the seasons progressed .

Even the trip by road up from Sydney had its great moments , like suddenly coming across a long stretch of road over the mountains that changed from a drab green on the early trips , to glorious gold as wattles seemed to bloom in waves along the roadside . The flowering gums along the road often brought the strong smell of honey into the car as we would pass through intermittent patches of the strong scent .

As well , we could drop off at Wauchope to see the son and his family , or turn off into Port Macquarie . My wife was born in Taree , a large town on the way there , and spent all her Taree High School years travelling to school by bus from the little village of Coopernook . She still had relatives in the area , farmers on Jones Island , sawmillers at Ross Glen.

But the time came to set up house .

We did not want anything elaborate or expensive , so brick was not an option ; and as it had to be a place that could resist white ants , that meant that , unlike the place a neighbour built , it could not be timber .We did consider a pole house like his , and one of my lecturer friends took us out to see that style in one of the steeper suburbs of southern Sydney. However , our site was not really steep enough for one of them to be justified , even where it was steepest near the dam .

With all considerations weighed , the best option was a metal framed prefabricated house , clad with termite proof pressed hard wood , set on a concrete block . There were several styles of these prefabs, and the agent for them in Kempsey took us out to see his own place over towards the town of Sherwood : quite an elaborate structure and rather too big for us.

We therefore settled on the style called The Settler : a simple design with a front room that stretched the full length of the building ; one bedroom ; a good kitchen with a servery bar ; a laundry and separate bathroom/ toilet . We modified the long front room by rearranging the windows , two very large ones , one on each side of the big glass door , and with the door giving a wide view over the slope of the property . With the removal ( necessary ! ) of two large gums , we also had a view of the distant mountains .

What was particularly pleasing was the capability of adding of two verandahs , one on each long side of the cottage , both shady and protective .

We had to scout around for a builder . I can hammer a nail into wood , and do some quite elaborate tasks , but erecting a complete house without supervision was well beyond me .

Once again we were lucky. Ray was one of the first we contacted , and he was between jobs, needing a contract to keep his workers employed over the Christmas period and was eager to take on what was to him a new style of construction. More important than that , he turned out to be an excellent tradesman , such a nice fellow that while we were there , we became good friends .

Once all the materials for the house had been delivered to the site , we left the job entirely in his hands , making irregular visits to monitor progress and becoming more and more pleased with the results as the time passed.