RACHAEL BOON AND BEN WALLACE

Oaks Kitchen & Garden (Oak Beach, Queensland) Compared with two years ago, life couldn’t be more different for Ben Wallace and Rachael Boon. In 2017 they quit Melbourne’s northern suburbs to clear 1.6-hectares of overgrown land owned by Boon’s dad in Tropical North Queensland. Now Boon, a former manager at Fitzroy venue Village People Hawker Foodhall, and Wallace, former sous-chef at Collingwood’s Easy Tiger, divide their time between growing Thai ingredients, teaching travellers and locals to cook, and creating Southeast Asian feasts at their restaurant, Oaks Kitchen. “I feel sometimes I’m in a dream,” says Boon. “There’s so much nature and beauty around me.”

A highlight of living in lush tropical surrounds, they say, is having so much edible inspiration at hand. But it’s been a vertiginous learning curve. Before arriving at Oak Beach the pair’s gardening know-how was limited to inner-city plots and balconies. And their daily routine has been turned virtually inside out. “When we were working in restaurants, by the time you cash up and clean up, you’re not home until around 4.30am. These days we’re up at 4.30am – but not by choice,” laughs Wallace. “We’d probably stay asleep until 5.30am or 6am if we could – but the rooster wakes us, and we have to go and tend to him and the chickens.”