Exercise 8.1 The 30-minute walk

It takes me 30 minutes or more to walk around my 2.6 hectares of heaven. It has many features: a cool reflective pool of pure clean water, a forest of maritime pines, several fern filled gullies, some clear ground and a good area of aussie bush -mainly blackwoods, black wattles, manor and stringybark gums and an enormous brooker gum overlooking the beach I've created next to the dam.

As well as breathtaking beauty wherever you look, there are a ghosts of times past. My father, his mother and my first dog all now dead have special places for their ashes here and they still exist for me as if they were still alive.

My family bought the place from timber cutters in 1960. The timber cutters established it in 1915. Before that it was a watering hole for cattle teams on their way to the goldfields. Before that, the Kulin people maintained it for over 40,000 years.

I grew up here during weekends cutting blackberries, fixing up the old house, planting the orchard and keeping the fire going during the bitter winters. I feel I know the place so well that I could describe every blade of grass, every whispering pine and every fruit tree.

Ten years ago I demolished the old home and built another one just like it on the same spot- only bigger, with running water, electricity, a broadband connection, telephone and heating.

But I took the best timber, fittings and windows and built them into the 'new house'. Now I live here permanently, not just at weekends. Although I sit in a new house, I can still look through the same windows at the same view. It is so peaceful and nurturing, the city slickers who occasionally visit never want to leave - but we let them go anyway.