Fig Tree Country Retreat: a hilltop view and a place to park your plane

Heading up the semi-loose drive flanked by scrub, wallabies and hares are the first to greet visitors.

After a minute or two of snaking around and up, something happens: scrub gives way to a grassy hill.

It's so panoramic, it's hard to believe how hidden it is.

When owners Ken Edwards and his partner Ruth Ashburner-Gorse decided to leave the Lockyer Valley for a Darling Downs home, they had two prerequisites: a view and an airstrip.

Finally, after two years of searching, 57-hectare property Fig Tree at Irongate revealed itself.

On inspection, it was covered in scrub, had one house and some cattle on agistment.

But hidden by the scrub was a glorious view - a patchwork quilt of crops stretching to the horizon.

"I've been very lucky to have had a view most of my life. Even when I was a kid in England, we lived on a hill with a lovely view at my parents' house," Ruth says.

"My 'must-have' was a view and Ken's was an airstrip and it's very hard to find an airstrip with a view anywhere."

The additional 400m airstrip was enough to convince them, so they bought it in 2017.

They got to work clearing some of the scrub, picking rocks, grading and spreading some couch and kikuyu seed.

Since they had an Airbnb in the Lockyer, they decided to do the same there and began renovating the house - painting over the sky blue with white, installing wire and post fencing and myriad other jobs.

At the time, Ken, a commercial helicopter pilot and aircraft engineer, had almost finished building his Carbon Cub kit plane and needed somewhere to store it.

That's when they built the centrepiece of the grounds - a 20x15m hangar.

However, the three steel walls and sliding front doors felt cold and aloof.

Something was missing, so they built a studio apartment onto the hangar. But again, it was clinical looking. That's when the personality of the place started to develop.

"We drove past a yard at Mount Tyson for about three years and saw this big pile of corrugated iron just rusting," Ruth says.

"We stopped one day and went in and we bought some off the lady and that's what we did for the outside of the studio to start with.

"Then we couldn't find any for ages. Friends of ours that live in Leyburn had some in their paddock they had there for ages, covered in grass. We bought the rest of that to do the rest of the hangar."

Not long after, the drought arrived and put pressure on the eye-catching hilltop.

"A lot of people in this area lost a lot of old gum trees and we'd worked so hard to resurrect and keep the two fig trees that we've got. We didn't want to lose them in the drought," Ruth says.

They kept their bore water up to them and they pulled through, and while the pair were at it, they installed a small watering station for the plentiful wildlife.

"It's a bit like a sanctuary here now. All the animals come up here because there's no predators," Ken says.

As the drought receded, an event that no one saw coming would change the course of the couples' lives forever.

"We both lost our jobs in COVID. I worked in Papua New Guinea for 20 years doing a lot of bushfire work and then it came along and everything went upside down," Ken says.

It was at that time they had to decide to either get a job outside of their fields or expand their home into a country retreat.

"We knew because of COVID that we had to diversify. You can't just stick to one thing," Ruth says.

"When people came here in the beginning, they said, 'where can we walk? So we put a walking track in. That took three months with the tractor, chainsaw and the two of us. People love that walking track now."

They spent 18 months working on the property, picking more rocks to build a gargantuan rock wall and clearing more scrub behind the hangar.

A view stretching almost to Pittsworth in the south east was finally unearthed.

"We got that cleared and the view was just astounding," Ruth says.

It was a mix of brown, green and gold in the winter as the wheat matured next to fallow paddocks, and a flurry of orange, white and yellow in summer as the sorghum, cotton and sunflowers came to life.

A self-confessed Pinterest 'freak', Ruth looks and Ken builds. The tried and true system led to their next project - a silo bar.

"We thought, 'what a great place to gather'. It's just really a cool place to watch the sun go down," Ruth says.

"We only really wanted one, but the man at Leyburn said, 'I've got another one here. If you give me another $500, you can take it as well. We were like, 'We should probably do that, but we don't know what we're going to do with it.

"It sat there for two and a half years in the paddock. Then we thought, 'wouldn't it be great if you could actually sleep in that?'

That's when the glamping silo was born.

Kitted out with a wood burning fire place, solar power, water tank and fly screens, all visitors need is a swag and food and they're set.

"The old Dalby couple that we bought the water tank off were absolutely delighted to think that it was going to be used all over again," Ruth says.

"He would have been about 80 and he can remember that tank being on their garage on his parents' property. We reckon the tank's probably 100 years old."

Another slice of memorabilia that begs more questions is an old rusting car. A 1953 Ford Prefect - Ruth and Ken bought it from a friend of a friend in Esk.

There's also a windmill they rebuilt from scrap, a windsock, truck wheel hub fire pits and plenty of model airplanes.

"People just seem to love it. A lot of the bits and pieces are old bits of aircraft that Ken has put together. It's a mixture of country and aviation," Ruth says.

For Ken, he's always wanted to be able to fly home or take Ruth on a trip, so the airstrip was a dealmaker. But it's also opened up a whole new side to their Airbnb.

"There aren't a lot of places where you can fly in and stay, which is a big problem. If you're lucky enough to be able to get away in a plane and fly somewhere, usually you've got to get an Uber or a taxi to wherever you're staying," Ruth says.

As their home transforms more and more into a business, it begs the question: where are they going to sleep?

"We've been camping in a tent on the other side of the hill. We've spent weeks in the glamping silo in between guests. We're transient," Ruth says.

"Occasionally, Ruth's slipped up and booked everything out so we've been in the tent," Ken cheekily adds.

"Or phoned a friend and said, 'hey, do you want a visitor?' Ruth says.

"A lot of people have said they don't know how we do it, but you do what you've got to do when you're building a business. We don't mind it at all. We're used to it now," she says.

Ruth says it was Easter this year when the whole plan finally made sense.

"One night we looked out and we had eight fires going around and it just looked so lovely," she says.

"You could hear people laughing and having a lovely time. That was probably the first time we actually sat there and thought, 'wow, this is fantastic. Look at all these people relaxing and enjoying themselves'. Especially after the last two years."

The pair now share their home with people from a variety of persuasions and destinations - from teenagers and retirees to Israelis and caravaners to stargazers, ornithologists and loved up couples.

The one caveat? No too many people at one time.

"It's all about smaller, intimate groups here. We want low key. We want people to have the space and enjoy it."

They've even dipped their toes into hosting small weddings - something Ruth, as a marriage celebrant, is well versed in.

"We've done very small ceremonies - mostly elopements. That's been something that we'd like to concentrate a bit more on in the future, but on the smaller scale," she says.

"We've got a silo bar and a glamping silo, but this one that we're working on now ... it's like the Versace of silos, but not quite that flash," Ruth says.

Ken and Ruth weren't quite sure what the move to Irongate had in store for them, but it certainly wasn't retirement.

"Move to the country... Take it easy. Man, we haven't worked so hard since we've been here," he says.

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