ADVENTURE
Trekking with Tim
His love affair with the Snowy Mountains goes well beyond political connections. It's where Tim Fischer is investing for the future.
Story: Paul Myers
For
just a moment Tim Fischer is lost for words. And for a brief half hour or
so he's allowing himself to dream. It's just a week before he'll pull the
pin on almost 30 years in state and federal parliaments and it's obvious
that, for the time being, the former deputy prime Minister has switched into
his political after-life.
Tim Fischer is standing on the cleared building site of his 40 hectare bush block on the western edge of the Snowy Mountains.
A couple of hundred feet below the Khancoban Pondage - that feeds water down the Swampy Plains River into the Murray and onto the farms and towns of his federal electorate of Farrer - glistens in the morning sun.
Across the lake, the village of Khancoban nestles peacefully into the foothills of the mountains which rise majestically to the east and south.
"Two-minute
Tim" or "Tim the hat", or whatever other sobriquets he wears, just don't seem appropriate in this
the most paradoxical setting to the bearpit of parliament.
Along with his farm at Boree Creek in the NSW Riverina, his wife Judy's cattle property in north-east Victoria and a unit in Sydney, this is where Tim Fischer will spend his new life.
In a year or so an A-frame that accommodates three or four families in style will be built on the site.
The "Khancoban Eco Vista Lodge", as he refers to it, will be operational, attracting - among others - diplomats and their families seeking some peace and serenity in the mountains.
Private citizen Tim Fischer will have left behind the intense scrutiny and pressures of public life.
On the eve of his mid-January announcement, It's impossible to detect
a tinge of regret or any second thoughts. What is certain is that this gangly
bloke from the plains is right at home in the mountains. 
Full story: Issue 10 April-May, 2000
