25 years ago this month we moved into the house we have now sold. We lived in another very cute and lovely house for 7 years on the other side of town. We decided after 8 years in Alice, life here suited us. But perhaps we would indulge ourselves with a house that had a view of the beautiful MacDonnell Ranges (see masthead photo). We listed that house with an agent on a Tuesday and by Friday of that week it was sold. The open inspection booked for Saturday never happened. To say we were shocked is a true understatement.

Don was travelling out bush and up to Darwin frequently in those days and Allison was in year 8 primary school. I was trying to do a bit of freelance work but when we had time we looked at houses for sale. There were few that were as nice as ours, probably why it sold so fast, and even fewer with the view we wanted. I distinctly remember one day curling up in a foetal position on our bed and crying. We had sold our house and looked at everything available for sale, which wasn’t much at the time, with no good prospects. Time was running out.

We had seen a house from the outside that interested us, but the tenants were trying to get a loan to buy it so we couldn’t see the inside. It had the view—we could see that from the higher aspect on the road as we drove by. A few days after my dispirited, tearful interlude, I got a call from the real estate agent. The prospective buyers could not get the loan they needed, did we want to see the house? A couple of days later when Don was home again we inspected the house. It was made of rammed earth, as are perhaps 8 other houses and one museum here in Alice. The earth walls were in good enough shape but the rest of the house was visibly unloved, unmaintained and needed updating everywhere. But in the first ten minutes we entered the house we decided it was the one. It had the view, and as they say ‘good bones’. We checked out the construction with an architect friend to make certain what we were buying. Satisfied, we made an offer and it was accepted.

The house had virtually no plants in the garden and the small shed was built in front of the best view of the ranges. This was before the days of easy digital photography so the photos I have are not great, but when I say every surface and room in this house has been upgraded and/or modified over 25years, I mean everything. The doors, the walls, the floors, both bathrooms, the kitchen, the undercover areas outside, the paving and the expanse of windows that have been the source of much joy, were all updated over the years. Watching the clouds cluster around the mountain, the sun setting behind it in the evenings, the moon at night and the kangaroos that frequently visit has been a delight beyond words. The rammed earth walls have had me on both ladders and knees, repairing it outside, and inside vacuuming up the dust that blows through unsealed cracks when we have dust storms and windy weather. And when a freak hail storm broke out both bathroom skylights and another freak storm cell blew a large tree down, there were months of repairs to endure. And then there were the unwanted visitors…a poisonous snake, red back spiders, and a large centipede that crawled into a pillow and stung me through the case, not to mention dozens of mice and large huntsman spiders. Almost all of the work has been commissioned and overseen and even designed by myself after discussions with Don. This house and its maintenance has been our project for all these years, and lately I have been saying, I want to retire. I’m done. Let someone else take the house to its next stage. That said, it has offered us an unparalleled experience and satisfaction.

Last September, a year after paying the deposit on the Adelaide apartment, I sent a simple text message to our friend who is a real estate agent. He had taken a year sabbatical and I didn’t even know if he was working again, and if so, was he once again selling real estate? (I had warned him when he told me he was taking leave from his work that we would be selling and leaving Alice.) The text simply asked him if he was back to work at the real estate agency. His reply was ‘I’m here for you’. Those words began an avalanche of events. I then replied that I thought we might be ready to do something. The next day he sent a message asking if he could show our place to someone. Once again, I was shocked, and overwhelmed thinking of everything I would need to do for the house to be in ‘show shape’. They wanted to see it the next day!

It turned out the couple had been on the search for the ‘right’ house for several years. Ten minutes after the agent brought them through, they discussed an offer with him, which he subsequently discussed with us, and which we accepted. The thought of not having to go through inspections with strangers walking through the house for possibly months on end was a bonus. The rammed earth construction is quite quirky and would not be everyone’s cup of tea but the curious would come as well. We always knew that. The purchaser is a builder with his own company and a lovely family and they felt like the perfect fit for this house and the neighbourhood when we met them a week or so later. They still do.

The other bit of background weirdness about this house is the land. Back in 1988, before the house was built, it originally belonged to the same couple whose house we had bought on the other side of town in 1993. True story. We only learned this in the process of buying our current place because their names were listed as previous owners of the block of land. And wait for it…our real estate agent’s Dad actually built the rammed earth walls of this house for the original owner/builder, a fact we learned when consulting the architect before purchasing, but we did not yet know the son, who knew our daughter in school he later told me. Some of this can be explained by Alice being a small place, however it is still 28,000 people and many days I go into town and never see anyone I know, so I think there is an energetic mystery woven into our life here. Whatever the serendipity of it, it has made for an interesting life, one I couldn’t have imagined for myself and am forever grateful to have experienced.