A secret love affair...

In 2011 I had a dirty little secret. My husband Michael was away from home ~ a military man, an Army soldier ~ he was gone 14 months that time. Although I worked and had three children to care for, my soul yearned for something more. Something that would warm my heart and occupy my thoughts. I was lonely, missing my husband and in those quiet moments I retreated to memories of when we were together and the world was at our feet.

I remembered our first holiday together driving around Tasmania where we stayed in gorgeous old bed and breakfasts, ate amazing local food, walked in ancient forests, visited cheese factories, saw waterfalls and endless green flowing hillsides with farms and flowers and animals shrouded in early morning mists ~ wisps of smoke drifting out of chimneys.

I thought of our family holidays to Michael's family in South East Queensland, waking up to cows outside my bedroom windows, hilly streets, farm fresh produce and gorgeously detailed Queenslander houses with their sub-tropical cottage gardens.

I had no right to be seeking more, we had a lovely house in suburban Darwin - perfectly normal, just like many others in the area. We had a large pool, tropical garden and shed, well-paid Government jobs and three happy, healthy children.

We even had a tiny veggie plot down the side of the house, a 4 x 2m single vegetable bed where we grew massive heirloom Brandywine tomatoes, as big as a baby's bottom, up to 600grams each. Michael and I would come home each afternoon and go straight to the tomatoes ~ the pretense was to water them but it was the smell that beckoned us. Never before had I smelt that heady combination of tomato and sunshine, and that was just touching the stems or leaves. As the flowers, then tomatoes appeared we watched fascinated by the changing colours of this delicious fruit from green to orange, then a pinky red - almost fuchsia lipstick colour. Larger and larger they grew and when we finally picked them and cut them open we discovered an even greater surprise. Unlike the store bought tomatoes with their firm outsides and mostly watery, flavourless interiors, ours were mostly flesh - one slice being just perfect on a sandwich - and the flavour was like nothing I had ever tasted.

We began to watch farming shows like Fat Pig Farm and River Cottage and that's when the seeds of discontent were planted. When my husband went away with the Army I would look online at rural properties for sale around Australia and then one day I found it. Not far from Michael's family was a Queenslander on 21 beautiful acres. I poured over the pictures, the plaster ceilings, the detailed wooden trim, the expansive verandahs, the cast iron fireplace, the scalloped edge metal window awnings - it was love at first sight.

For the whole time my husband was away I thought of the Corella house. When the dishes were done and the kids were in bed I would check to see if it was still for sale. Sometimes even in my lunch breaks at work, I would sneak a peek at it again. It became my obsession. When my husband finally came home I showed him the house but he was more grounded than I was and dismissed it as wishful thinking. I kept looking though, less often than before, just checking if it had been sold.

So not long after that we were planning a trip home to Michael's family and a sneaky thought formed in my mind that if the Corella house was still for sale I would casually find a way to go see it in the flesh ~ just for a look, you know. That's how it came to be that we were driving down (and then up, and then down and then up and up, and up) a very steep, dirt road to finally get to the Corella house. In all my day dreamings and detailed study of the photos I hadn't realised the house was on the side of a mountain. We stepped out of the car and looked around at the valley below us and my heart lurched - one of those lurches when you see "that guy", or when you first set eyes on your newborn baby, or find yourself doing something you truly love. I looked over the car at Michael and I could tell he felt it too.

The house (although empty) was gorgeous, the gardens lush and full of scented flowers, some hibiscus and roses as big as my outstretched hand. Lemons, mandarines and mango trees. We were utterly smitten and decided to put in a cheeky offer $80,000 less than the asking price - knowing it had been on the market for at least 18 months by that stage. To our surprise the offer was accepted. To make it work would mean the kids and I relocating to Queensland and Michael might be able to come in a couple of years after his Army posting was over, if he could find work. We visited the house three more times and eventually Michael convinced me if we wanted to complete our family and have another baby we would have to be in the same place.

I was shattered, it just seemed so meant to be and as if to hammer the final nail into the coffin - a month later the house was bought by someone else. My love affair was over.