Long Journey Home

From a boy­hood in WA to a new life and fam­ily in Lon­don, Julian Leigh has finally brought it all together in the Sun­shine Coast hin­ter­land of Queens­land, Australia.

The view from Julian and Gillian Leigh’s Maleny home is strik­ing. In the dis­tance lie the Glasshouse Moun­tains, a smudged char­coal out­line that con­trasts starkly with the rolling green farm­land in the fore­ground. A stately Mor­ton Bay fig draws the eye to the front gar­den and a lily pond com­pletes the serene pic­ture. The tran­quil­lity is momen­tar­ily dis­turbed as Gillian arrives with a horse trailer, spilling chil­dren and dogs while apol­o­gis­ing for a pony club meet­ing that lasted a tad too long. Julian emerges with a firm hand­shake and cheery “G’day!”, look­ing every bit the farmer.
Shortly after­wards, a friend deliv­ers a choco­late cake for our after­noon tea and the real­i­sa­tion grows that the set­ting is not the only attrac­tion — it’s the gen­uine friend­ships, lack of pre­tence and sense of com­mu­nity that draws peo­ple to Maleny. The town on the Sun­shine Coast hin­ter­land is just over an hour from Bris­bane, with great beaches a mere 45 min­utes away. It’s not hard to under­stand how this cou­ple and their three chil­dren were happy to trade the hub­bub of Lon­don for such a tran­quil set­ting.
Julian left Aus­tralia with his fam­ily as a 13-year-old when work took his den­tist dad over­seas.
“I’d always had fond mem­o­ries of my child­hood in out­back West­ern Aus­tralia and enjoyed the sun­shine and free­dom,” he says.
“I could ride my BMX bike and have lots of ani­mals… The lack of sun­shine in the UK really affected me — I found it quite depress­ing.”
Julian com­pleted most of his school­ing in Eng­land and stud­ied den­tistry in London.It was here that he met Cambridge-born Gillian, who had stud­ied art and worked as an illus­tra­tor. Gillian knew some­thing of the land Julian hailed from, hav­ing back­packed in Aus­tralia as an 18-year-old; she says she fell in love with the coun­try from the start.The cou­ple even­tu­ally set­tled into the pace of Lon­don, but by the time their fam­ily had expanded to three chil­dren, the lure of space and a sunny cli­mate grew ever stronger.
“I wanted my chil­dren to have the same expe­ri­ence I’d had as a child,” explains Julian.
“I worked from 8am to 8pm every day — many peo­ple in the UK work hard for the right car and right house.But before you know it, the kids have grown up and you’ve missed out on all the other things in life.”
Gillian was also keen for a lifestyle change and the deci­sion was made to sell up and seek a new life in Aus­tralia. They drove around Aus­tralia in a camper­van for six months, look­ing for a place to call home. First on their wish list was com­fort­able, year-round tem­per­a­tures for out­door pur­suits.
“We also didn’t want stingers or crocs, and it had to be no more than two hours from an inter­na­tional air­port,” Julian says. They ini­tially set­tled on a water­front home at Minyama, a 35-minute drive from Maleny, and bought the 16-hectare Maleny prop­erty with the idea of cre­at­ing a week­ender.
“We kept a horse here and had to drive an hour every day to ride,” Gillian says. “Then we bought more horses — and it made sense to move here per­ma­nently.”
First, they had to find a house. Gillian scouted the coun­try­side for a Queens­lan­der to com­ple­ment the trop­i­cal sur­round­ings. Her search ended in Her­vey Bay where she found the per­fect his­tor­i­cal home­stead. Built around 1872, it had orig­i­nally been a surgeon’s res­i­dence. It sur­vived being cut in two and shifted to Maleny. All it needed was a lick of paint and some minor updat­ing — fibro replaced and the roof redone — to bring it up to scratch. A sleek clas­sic coun­try kitchen, with a mod­ern­day Aga stove and gran­ite bench­tops, was another addi­tion.
One of the joys of their new loca­tion is the sense of space.
“I love being able to focus on things in the dis­tance and watch a storm com­ing in,” Gillian says. The prop­erty is a haven for the couple’s three chil­dren, Alexan­der (Alex), 13, Char­lotte (Lot­tie), 12, and Amelia (Mimi), 9.
“It took a while for them to set­tle but they love it now,” Gillian says.
“Mimi often takes a pic­nic bas­ket and plays for hours near the stream or in the sta­bles — some­times she takes her pony, Angel, with her.”
It’s hard to believe the fam­ily have been in their home for only two years — roots are already deep and friend­ships have flour­ished. Week­ends are a happy mix of friends, motor­bikes (Julian and Alex are avid trail-bike enthu­si­asts), horses and polo (the last being a par­tic­u­lar favourite of Gillian).
“Our con­nect­ed­ness with Maleny stems from how we spend our leisure time, I sup­pose, and we enjoy quite a lot of it,” Gillian says.
The cou­ple exude a love of life — per­haps made all the more poignant by a grave health scare that Julian suf­fered some 18 months ago.
“I sim­ply stopped talk­ing — and it turned out to be a brain tumour,” he says. The tumour was removed but com­pli­ca­tions forced him to take six months off work. Now Julian works a three-day week at his Minyama den­tistry prac­tice. The rest of the week is taken up with look­ing after his herd of 20 Black Angus Low­lines, and see­ing to main­te­nance on the other prop­er­ties the cou­ple own in Maleny.
While not raised as a farmer, Julian says he has always been “hands on and pre­pared to give any­thing a go” — be it putting up fences or cas­trat­ing cat­tle.
“I’ll invite a farmer friend around to teach me and we’ll have a beer and a few good laughs,” he says.
Gillian’s life is equally full. Apart from rid­ing daily, she runs a bed-and-breakfast called Half Moon Hide­away on the prop­erty. While their life sounds idyl­lic, Julian points out that it comes with a lot of hard work.
“It’s def­i­nitely not an elderly peo­ples’ prop­erty,” he says.
“But I really enjoy the com­plete oppo­site to being a den­tist, where I’m con­cen­trat­ing on a square cen­time­tre. Here, I’m hop­ping on a trac­tor or chop­ping down trees.”
“And we don’t feel life is pass­ing us by,” con­cludes Gillian.

Copy­right © 2007 Lois Nicholls