Welcome to our website!
About Us
We both grew up in Melbourne Australia, met in our late teens and were married in 1967. We are now retired and live a busy life from our home-base in Wonboyn New South Wales, a small town on Wonboyn Lake a kilometre or two from the Pacific Ocean. The vast gardens on the property (including the large vegetable plot) keep us busy much of the time - but we are ably assisted (in some regards) by the extensive and diverse wildlife.
Lyrebirds cultivate the garden beds, kangaroos mow the lawns, and the wallabies eat whatever shrubs and fruit trees we plant. So we have learned to share our needs with all of them in an harmonious but at times testing relationship.
We now tend to restrict our overseas travel to the non-Summer months as we live in a very fire -prone area with 50km of National parks to our North and South and a similar distance of NSW Forests to our West. The Ocean is our eastern neighbour. We maintain a house in inner Melbourne where Anne travels regularly to visit our youngest daughter Tanya and her husband Hayden, but mainly to spend some special quality "grandma-time" with our grand-daughter Kalahni. Our elder daughter Jacque lives in Canberra where she works as a Environmental Engineer (when she's not at the coast exercising her other passion - teaching scuba-diving.
Wonboyn and the Sapphire Coast of NSW
Wonboyn is a small rural village of around 60 people located mid way between Sydney and Melbourne on the coastal highway (the Princes Highway - Nat Route 1), A trip to either is 560km and takes around 6hours. The national Capital - Canberra is only 300km inland and takes about 3hours. Our nearest large town is Eden, 30km away. Wonboyn is a pretty village set on a lake/estuary which has a opening to the ocean via a rather tricky "bar". The lake is renown for its oysters and prolific bream and large flathead. We have a General Store/Post Office, and a small caravan/camping park - and that's about it (apart from our fire-station with three well equipped fire trucks.
The tranquil Wonboyn Lake on a calm morning, ideal for the sea kyakks
The "busy" Wonboyn ocean beach - the Pacific. Three kilometres of beautiful sandy beach - and NO people
.Wonboyn Lake meets the Pacific Ocean at "Baycliff"
Soundwave is our racing yacht
Soundwave is our Masrm920 racing yacht and lives on its mooring in Quarantine Bay near Eden. She is too deep a draft to get into the Wonboyn Lake. Regrettably, its a boat that is served well by about 6 "gorillas" lining the rail to keep her upright, so Anne and I need to constantly reconfigure sails to deal with rising wind strength. Under 10kts she can be pretty invincible, but as the wind gets up its more than two of us can handle. And strangely enough, crew is very hard to find in the maritime town of Eden - but fishermen abound!. Regardless , we have a lot of fun just sailing the Twofold Bay region. Distance cruising is difficult as there are essentially no all weather ports for several hundred kilometres in either direction that can offer shelter in bad weather. About 50km south of Eden is the infamous Bass Strait that has witnessed so many disasters in past Sydney Hobart yacht races. Indeed, Eden is the last safe haven that many competitors take shelter in if the weather turns bad on the run to Hobart, Tasmania.
The Wildlife of Wonboyn
The Wonboyn area has a very diverse range of animals, birds, reptiles and fish. The village adjoins the massive 500sq km Nadgee Nature Reserve to the south - the jewel in the crown of NSW National Parks, forming one of their few wilderness areas. We have dingoes, lyrebirds, eagles, wombats, kangaroos, parrots, snakes, as well as the odd seal and dolphin in our lake. There's also a few wild deer (considered vermin by Nat Parks). Most of these are regulars on our property, variously helping or hindering the maintenance of our gardens.
The Property at Wonboyn
The Wonboyn property is nestled in cleared bushland outside of the village and about 200M from the town's boat launching ramp. It is gently sloping land with a secluded gully and a small dam. A much larger dam was built by the previous owner on a nearby hill and while no longer on our land it is available to us and provides a plentiful quantity of water at a good pressure head. The soil is a bit poor and Anne puts much work into her vegetable patch with great results. Despite the insatiable appetites of the wallabies, we have managed to encourage perhaps 100 native shrubs to develop. The house is a meticulously built large solid brick construction, reputed to contain 70000 bricks offering a massive heat-sink and a stable internal temperature year-round. All ceilings (including the verandas) are lined with western red cedar with woolly-butt as the decking. We also have an adjacent fully self-contained unit (we dub the honeymoon suite). Doug is fortunate to have a machinery shed/workshop that is a mere 70ft x 30ft and equipped with all the tools and equipment that any one man could possible wish to have. It serves as a fix-it place for attending to the mechanical problems of the locals. The potable water supply is through rainwater tanks with a 35000gal reserve. Anne also has a shade house and greenhouse to assist her plant propagation activity, and Doug has a small brick building nearby that houses a brewery and distillery. We've put considerable effort in making the house fire defendable with roof sprinklers and steel shutters that can be fitted to every glass door/window opening. In addition we have diesel pumps feeding a fire ring main with hose-reels.
