A vision splendid
It may be hard to believe today, but when Christina Kennedy and her publishing executive husband, Trevor, decided to build on Horse Island in Tuross Lake on the NSW coast in 1994, they started with an unfenced, 200-acre (80-hectare) paddock.
It wasn’t exactly bare, as scrubby bush and black wattle that had sprung up following a fire dominated the landscape. There were also remnant kurrajongs, stands of old southern mahogany, forest red gum and ironbark shading the open spaces. Casuarinas lined the foreshores and subtropical rainforest surrounded by spotted gums filled the central valley. Grazing cattle had degraded the water’s edge and, along with a large population of kangaroos, kept the grasslands semi under control. Weeds, however, were rife.
Christina’s family had a long history with Horse Island when she and Trevor bought it in the late 1980s. Her
