Article Surfing Archive

Just after the big flood in Katherine, I came out here with my partner on a sales trip; we used to travel throughout the Northern parts of Australia designing polo shirts and selling them. When we got to Katherine I ran into an old friend from Townsville, after 2 weeks of coming and going they asked me if I wanted to stay longer, it being ok with my partner i said yes.

After a few days I started to get bored so I got a job at Woolworths, I liked their uniform. After 1wk I saw an ad in the paper for a Tailoress that was required at the RAAF Base Tindal, so I applied for it. I got the job, that was May 1998, and i have been there since. Every day I would drive to work and say to myself and anyone else that would listen that I wanted to buy some land along the way to work.

We made an offer for some land on that road, but the owner rejected it, we were both stubborn about it, he wanted a higher price than we were willing to pay, so we didn't get it. Then we made an offer on a property further out of town, 2 weeks after signing the contract the owner went bankrupt, so we had to wait for settlement. In the meantime while waiting for this property to settle, we went and bought a fixer upper, in the hope of getting the house looking nice to increase equity in order to assist us in getting the finance through. We had to wait so long for the land to settle that we decided to buy another house 2 yrs later and do the same thing, after another year the land still hadn't settled. Then we decided to make an offer on a residential block, after making the offer, we went for a drive around Katherine to have a look at some of the new kit home designs, to give us an idea of what to put on this house block.

We drove around all of the new Estates and saw a house with a for sale sign on it, near, or so we thought, the land that we had made an offer on 6yrs earlier. I liked it so much that I decided to make an offer on it. Lo and Behold it turned out to be the same one. The offer was accepted. Elvira's Dream had been realized, or at least begun.

We have always had the idea of buying land so that we could develop a Tourist Park or Caravan Park, or provide a venue for alternative lifestylers to visit, so now the long struggle continues.

What happened to the original piece of land. What happened to the original piece of land that we have a contract on. We are still waiting for that one to settle. Lots of problems sorting out the financial affairs of the bankruptee. But if it wasn't for that original piece of land we wouldn't have bought the 2 houses, and we wouldn't have got our 79acre block, which is ideal, more so than the original block, for our Tourist Park, Elvira's Paradise.

The reason for the name.

My partner says that once people meet me they never forget me, and if they visit us here they will never forget the name of our Park either. Because our home is at the front of the development, a Tourism NT lady who visited, said that people may feel like they are visiting our home. Our answer to that is: even if our home wasn't at the front of the land it is still our home and we aim to make all of our guests and visitors feel welcome and comfortable, just like it should be if they were visiting us in our home.