A COUNTRY GEM
After 14 years living and working in the hustle and bustle of Asian cities, Taya and Steve Michalski returned to Australia determined for a change of pace. While they candidly admit they had no idea what that might have involved, the size of the shift became apparent when Steve came back from the school run one day and announced that son Oren’s school was in lockdown. It wasn’t that there’d been a bomb threat, a fire, or a rogue student running amok; in fact, it was a quintessentially Australian problem. Someone had spotted a red-bellied black snake in the school bagging area, so the students, all 69 of them from prep to year six, had to be relocated to an upstairs area until a snake catcher arrived to sort out the unwelcome intruder.
The Michalskis
