First owner of the home in the 1890s was Tidbinbilla's eccentric poet-farmer, Irish-born Henry Ffrench Gillman. Gillman was fiery. He was infuriated by big landowners' attempts to place gates or fences across roadways. He warred with the prominent Cunningham family, and took legal action. One time he claimed he'd been threatened by AJ Cunningham and two employees, all armed, who ''met'' Gillman in the bush one night. He believed a neighbour tried to kill him by stretching a wire across his path. Once an effigy of Gillman was hung from a tree. Queanbeyan newspaper editor John Gale took Gillman to court on slander charges in 1902.

Gillman vented his feelings in his poems, yet many of them were well crafted. He wrote of the bush too. His On Nil Desperandum (he gave the name to the property) reveals a feeling for the bush akin to that of many lovers of the mountains today. He was kind to neighbours, giving books to John Noone and snapdragons to Mary Ann Green.

Tidbinbilla selectors George Green and George Hatcliff built Nil for Gillman. They were skilled in pise construction, and they erected a number of other pise buildings, including Green's own home Rock Valley, and William Farrer's wheat laboratory at nearby Lambrigg.

Gillman returned to Ireland in 1914. In 1930 Nil (by now rather rundown) was acquired by Bert Reid, lessee of Tidbinbilla Station. Reid let Nil to Eric and Elsie Blewitt and the Blewitts lived there for nearly two decades. During the Depression Eric did stockwork, drove bullocks at Rayners' Tidbinbilla sawmill, worked on roads, ran sheep and grew cereal crops. Elsie trapped rabbits for extra income; she would go off with 50 traps on her back of a morning. She raised a family in a home with no running water or electricity.

Daughter Sheila recalled for me in 1995 how as kids they ''only had one of everything, one dress, one pair of shoes, one school uniform - mum had to wash it at the weekend for us to go to school the next day''. Son Doug remembered how Eric made possum skin rugs. He caught the possums with rabbit traps at the base of trees, tanned the skins in a mixture of wattle bark and water, and finally they'd be stitched together. How many possums for a rug, I asked? ''About 60,'' answered Doug.

Blewitts' closest neighbours were three Czech-born men, Martin Teckle, Steve Lajcin and Jan Jandura, who distilled eucalyptus at several sites, including on nearby Hurdle Creek in the 1940s. The Czechs lived in a simple hut and got on well with local farmers. The remains of a highly intact still can be seen today close to Nil.

Another notable activity close by was a koala enclosure erected beyond Hurdle Creek by the Institute of Anatomy in 1939. It was stocked with koalas brought from Victoria (local ones having become extinct by then), decades before the nature reserve was declared. It wasn't simply for conservation but for biological investigations too. Unfortunately during WWII the enclosure fell into disrepair.

Eric Blewitt was skilled with horses. He shoed neighbours' horses and regularly raced at the old Acton course (now under Lake Burley Griffin). But one morning in 1949 when he was drenching his stallion, Bungool, for parasites, the big horse reared and struck Eric heavily on the head. Eric died almost immediately. It was only a week after his daughter Barbara's wedding.

In 1950 Nil passed to the Gilmour family of Canberra. Darcy (CSIRO) and Kath (ANU) Gilmour took it on as a hobby farm, and were the advance guard of all those subsequent Canberrans who have sought the rural life on a weekender basis. Kath later owned the place in her own right, and she and her children were joined by friends (the Crawfords, Setons and others) as they raised a cattle herd and cropped the paddock over the creek. Her memories of Nil were happy ones when I interviewed her.

For the adults and kids, Nil was a lovely adventure. The children enjoyed the bush, the animals, and a swimming pool which during the 1950s was built into Hurdle Creek and whose stone wall can still be seen. The bush's influence was strong and for some in the group it shaped their lives. Kath's son Phil, together with Isobel and brother Harry Crawford, later lived at Nil as adults. Phil pursued the natural sciences professionally and, with partner Carole Helman, helped research the National Capital Development Commission's very important volumes, the ACT Sites of Significance series. Isobel has worked in the botanical field now for decades.

Phil added another level to Nil's fascinating history when with friend Leon Horsnell he planted a camellia and azalea grove of 600 plants near the creek. The plan was to sell them as advanced specimens to Canberra gardeners. But the government resumed Nil before any plants were sold. Yarralumla Nursery was to obtain the plants after resumption, but many of them remained in the plot, flowering beautifully each spring.

Nil was one of the last freehold blocks in the ACT. In 1991 it was incorporated into Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. During the late 1990s it became available as accommodation. Then in 2003 the bushfires swept through. Everything but the pise burned. Glass melted - and that takes 1000 degrees celsius. Nil appeared to be lost. Yet remarkably, conservation work saw the place live again, and it's able to be used and enjoyed by people once more.

Nil Desperandum survives today to tell its story in the beautiful Tidbinbilla valley.