A COUNTRY GEM

The Michalski family has exchanged the bright lights of Asia for the starry skies of Stanthorpe, and hectic corporate life for hosting visitors at their rural retreat. They're pleased to report they couldn't be happier.

- KIRSTY MCKENZIE

After 14 years living and working in the hustle and bustle of Asian cities, Taya and Steve Michalski returned to Australia determined for a change of pace. While they candidly admit they had no idea what that might have involved, the size of the shift became apparent when Steve came back from the school run one day and announced that son Oren’s school was in lockdown. It wasn’t that there’d been a bomb threat, a fire or a rogue student running amok; in fact, it was a quintessentially Australian problem. Someone had spotted a red-bellied black snake in the school bagging area, so the students, all 69 of them from prep to Year six, had to be relocated to an upstairs area until a snake catcher arrived to sort out the unwelcome intruder.

The Michalskis moved to Stanthorpe, in the heart of south-east Queensland’s winemaking and fruit-growing Granite Belt, just before Christmas, 2016. They’d returned to Brisbane almost two years earlier with sons Jaden and Oren, who were both born overseas. After such an urban existence, they were determined for a new direction and talked vaguely about perhaps running a B&B “somewhere in the country”.

“Even when we lived in Asia, we took every opportunity to get outdoors,” Steve recalls. “We’d take the children on hikes in summer and skiing in winter. We continued when we came back to Australia and we quickly identified that we loved camping in Girraween and Sundown National Parks and the Scenic Rim.”