I’ve just bought myself a 115 year old Queenslander on the Sunshine Coast.

After six months of looking around, I now have a new home, with settlement just three weeks away.

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The charming 115 year-old residence was named Kegl Sugl, after a village near Mt Wilhelm in PNG’s Chimbu Province, by a missionary couple who once owned it. It was relocated from a northern beach suburb of Brisbane to the slopes of Buderim about 15 years ago by its current owners who have – with considerable affection I might add – restored it to its former glory (which is great as it means I don’t have to do it).

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Like my house in St Lucia, I knew it was “me” the moment I stepped beneath the lettering above its timber doorway (and wasn’t that a co-incidence given my association with PNG). Once I get my container of stuff moved up, it’s ready to be lived in (though plans are already afoot to add an en-suite, renovate the kitchen and clamp on some solar panels).

The purchase of Kegl Sugl is the culmination of a 12 month plan I had to sell my property in St Lucia at the peak of the market and buy another home – mortgage-free – closer to the beach. With that now realised, I’m expecting to spend the next six months making some improvements before renting it out and using the income to live abroad for 12 months at a time while I write a new series of travel books. Having spent the past two years as a student of Stoic philosophy, I’m thinking of starting off living in Greece and weaving the wisdom of the Stoics into the first book in the series, but I’ve got a coffee table book on Vanuatu to finish first now travel restrictions are finally being lifted.

Right now, it’s time to start hunting for some new furniture (…..a dangerous chapter indeed).