With two small boys they decided it was time to hang up moving between remote communities and hang pictures on their walls instead.

Mrs Cook said she and her husband could work from anywhere, and Nimmitabel’s community, open landscape, local characters, and sense of history reminded her of her native Western Desert.

The Cooks moved here in September, just in time for the late snowfall. They had been based in Darwin so the cold snap came as a shock.

“We’d been telling the kids we’d live on a farm after dragging them around with field work. We took them for a big walk to our bottom paddock and the pram collapsed and the other one was in the backpack and they were both screaming from the cold,” Mrs Cook said.

Despite this chilly introduction, the boys are thriving now at the Greenland property they call home.

“In the Territory you can either be on a huge pastoral station or a scrubby, weedy small block on the edge of town. Here we can be part of a small community and have a reasonable-sized property with some land and bush,” Mrs Cook said.

The Cooks have lived in Southeast Asia, on a tropical Pacific island and in many remote Australian communities. Their eldest boy, Cassidy, spoke Pitjantjatjara after the Cooks did field work in the Western Desert.

Although based in Nimmitabel, the Cooks will continue to work with aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

Mr Cook now specialises in negotiating between traditional owner groups and Mrs Cook has moved into aboriginal youth programs and community development.