I’d read my Thoreau, and swallowed it whole, and for many years was an avid reader of "Grass Roots" with its stories of young and idealistic people who built their houses out of discarded wooden beams and scraps of corrugated iron, went without electricity or telephones, hauled water and supplies on foot and by hand, and survived on almost next to nothing.
As I've since discovered, people who opt for this sort of life are either desperate or fools. I must've been both in those turbulent few months following my return to Australia in 1985 when I thought I could find my salvation in the country by answering a classified ad in the backpages of "Grass Roots" by someone called Uta Langer who wanted to sell a share in something called "Twin Rivers" or "Two Rivers" Farm near Lismore.
What stopped me from immediately dropping everything and driving up there was her comment that the place had no vehicular access and I would have to abandon my car - I think she used the word "park" - some-where in the middle of nowhere and hike the last ten-or-so kilometres.
Instead, I buckled down by finding myself a big job in Sydney, although then buckled under the stresses of a friendless city and relocated to the old familiarity of Canberra. And the rest, as they always say, is history.
For years I kept my old copies of "Grass Roots" as I couldn't bear the thought of throwing them out. Eventually I did when I buried them in landfill on "Riverbend" which is also in the country but accessible by car and where I live with electricity and telephone in a house that's a bit more than just a few discarded beams and scraps of corrugated iron.
