‘We did a crazy thing, Jack and I. We fell in love with a wild hillside in Foxground, rocky rainforest slopes sheltering wallabies, echidnas, wombats, snakes, pythons and lyrebirds. ‘La Luna’ inspired years of hare-brained schemes, but one of them endured. The tea garden we planted and tended over many years loved the forest shade, plentiful rain, ancient volcanic soil and green summer humidity. It thrived. Before long I had to figure out how to process the leaves and make a range of handmade teas.

 As the tea garden grew the life of the forest flourished around it. And so did the weeds. Stands of lantana ten metres high. Tobacco trees. Moth vine. A hundred different herbaceous marauders strangled, smothered and out-grew the native rainforest trees. The war on weeds was never-ending.

For a time, weighed down by other troubles, I was overwhelmed by the entropic ferocity of a resurgent weed jungle. It was a hard lesson to learn. The elements and the forest can reclaim everything you craft and create. The prospect of starting again was terrifying, but unavoidable.

Back at square one, trying to rehabilitate the tea garden and fighting the forces of wrack and ruin, I wondered why I couldn’t admit defeat. But then I remembered what had kept me labouring all those years – the magic of the living forest, the beauty of the evolving garden, and the realization that it might be my zen path.’