Chance plays a part in everyone’s lives, including Josh Barnes’. He’d headed up to the Blue Mountains from Sydney a few years ago, and bumped into a friend who asked if he could look after his house for a while. It sounded like a good idea, especially as his love life in the city was a disaster at the time.
While Josh was house-sitting, he wandered past a real estate agency and noticed an ad, low down in the window. ‘Studio in Nature’, it read. He’d been trying to set up a co-op outside the city with a few people, but the idea hadn’t taken off; the studio, which he could buy on his own, seemed a better option. It was, for a number of reasons, not least of which was the turnaround in his love life. He probably wouldn’t have met his wife, Emma, without it. “Her aunt has a property next door, and
