Just 40k out of Canberra on the Kings Hwy. (that's the one that goes through Braidwood to the coast at Bateman's Bay), is Bungendore. It has a town population of around 1500, made up of people who work in Canberra but don't want to live there, some rich people, some rural poor, and shopkeepers and support staff for the active tourist trade. On weekends, people spill out on the streets from the antique and craft shops, cafes and galleries. When you stand in line at the Gunna Doo Bakery you stand beside real farmers with sheep shit on their Blundstone's, and hobby farmers who dream of growing cool climate grapes or olives on their stony hard 25 acre blocks. There's some good restaurants, good B&B accommodation and the local butcher makes his own cabanossi.

Our (that's my wife Jan, and our Bungendaughters) house is on the edge of town. Made at the same time and from the same bricks as the railway station, it's an 1880's farmhouse-style place that has lots of fireplaces (it gets cold in Bungendore) and there's a half acre garden that the previous owners turned into a permaculture showcase. There are flowers, vegetables, fruit trees, chooks (a few less since a fox got to them) and a large deep pond with perch, freshwater crays and goldfish. The flower beds are full of English perennials and roses that snag your trousers as you work.

I've lived in the city and the country, even owned a weekend bush block for ten years and I don't think I have false expectations of country life. I sometimes miss Sydney and Melbourne and really enjoy it when I go to town for trade launches and meetings. Yet if I can continue to do MM from here, and make enough money from it to pay the bills, then this is the place I'd like to be for a while. Where do you live? FH. 1996

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