55 km (about a 40 minute drive) from Canberra and about 2 hours from southern Sydney or Wollongong, we find the Fedra Olive Grove alongside the Federal Highway.

It stands on 87 acres (35 hectares) of land. Founded in May 2000 by Spiros (Jeff) and Fedra Konstantinou, it was intended to promote both their greek heritage and love for olives. At the time it was little more than scrub. Now it's home to over 6,000 olive trees, a 3 bedroom home and 2 2 bedroom apartments, a chapel (presumably for weddings), a playground, processing shed, a restaurant (Kikis in the Grove, mentioned elsewhere in my galleries) and retail store. An Italian olive press imported in 2013 can process 1,500 kg of olives per hour.

How do I know all of this? Because in April 2019, Spiros and Fedra put the place up for sale. The selling agents created a page with quite a lot of history on it. Thankfully it was still up when I wrote this though it probably won't be by the time you read it. How much did it sell for? (Spoiler: It didn't.) What was the expected price? About $4.8 million.

I had written that it was a pity to think of someone who has built a place like this just walking away from it. On the other hand I had no idea how old they were. (In the case of Jeff, 73 in 2020 as it turned out.) 2000 feels like a few weeks ago in many respects, but maths doesn't lie; 20 years is a big chunk of life to devote to one thing. All that said, I later found an article in The Canberra Times dated 16 September 2020 talking about how the Konstantinous' olive oils won "gold medals at the prestigious Athena international olive oil competition" which is held in Greece. I guess the sale fell through. In a way that's a pity... and in another way it isn't.