I arrived at Cairns airport after a three-hour direct flight, jumped into my hire car, a cute little Hyandai Getz, and drove the short 25 kilometres into the mountain ranges behind Cairns to Kuranda, the Village in the Rain Forest. Checked into the Kuranda Hotel and enjoyed my first cold beer of the day. Later I went for a stroll up the main street of Kuranda and passed the Faraway Tree Building which I remembered from the real estate website as being the location of the two strata-titled flats for sale in town. As I looked around the building, a voice from above bailed me up. No, it wasn't God but Marshall, one of the tenants, who works at "The Ark" and who wasted no time in familiarising me with all the local gossip and introducing me to the only owner-occupiers in the building, the retired couple Pat & George Mcfarlane." [continue reading here]
I wrote this twenty years ago when we had had several prospective buyers and one firm offer for "Riverbend". Even though we are still at "Riverbend", I have kept up my interest in the little Village in the Rain Forest in the hills behind Cairns ever since.
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During my visit to Kuranda in 2003 I befriended the retired couple Pat & George Mcfarlane who lived in Unit 10 in the Faraway Treehouse which they bought in 1992 for $96,000. The unit for sale at the time was the two-bedroom Unit 11 which then sold in 2004 for $93,000 (after having been bought twelve years earlier for $96,000; the real estate market in the tropical north is fickle; one big cyclone or one big Wet and everyone goes back to the Deep South!)
Such small pied-à-terre would be ideal because, after thirty years at "Riverbend", I'll be definitely down-down-down-downsizing. No more carpentry or testing my plumbing skills, no more power tools or sitting for hours on a ride-on, and no more woodsplitting so as not to shiver through another cold winter. All I want is a room with a view (and room for my books) in a place that's either warm or hot but never cold.
Having kept my eyes on the Faraway Tree House for all this time, I've just discovered that Unit 12 is for sale AGAIN! - click here. It had sold just twelve months ago for $187,000 - click here. What's wrong with it?
However, the far more important question is, "After all this time, am I still willing and physically able to pack up and leave 'Riverbend' again"?
