Employment as a youth worker in Fortitude Valley during the 1990s taught me something important.

Many of the young people who came through our homelessness service had never known home as a safe place. Family wasn’t where they found security. Instead, they survived in squats, refuges and on the kindness of each other.

Witnessing that changed me. It made me realise that having somewhere to belong is not a luxury, it’s one of our deepest human needs.

Not long afterwards, one of my colleagues invited a group of us to have lunch at an old Queenslander he was house-sitting in Anstead.

“Where’s Anstead?” someone asked.

Nearly 30 years later, I’m often asked the same.

Tucked into Brisbane’s western fringe, between Brookfield, Moggill and the Brisbane River, Anstead is one of the city’s smallest suburbs.

On the traditional lands of the Jagera and Turrbal people (the bora ring at Moggill a precious reminder), it was once affectionately described as the “cheap side” of Brookfield and Pullenvale. These days, land in Anstead, like everywhere else, is not cheap.

As the roads narrow, horse paddocks replace shopping centres, and eucalypts crowd the skyline. The city can feel a long way away.

Mornings begin with kookaburras instead of traffic. Cockatoos screech overhead, and wallabies quietly lope across the roads.

On warm summer evenings, I often sit outside as the darkness settles. The cicadas begin first. Then the sugar gliders move silently between trees. An owl calls from beyond the trees. The stars appear where city lights haven’t managed to drown them out.

I consider it the best nightlife in Brisbane.

After the rain, frogs begin their chorus, and tawny frogmouths appear on fence posts. Possums, echidnas, lace monitors and the ceiling snakes remind us we’re sharing this place rather than owning it.

Living here means becoming part of a community that still feels fairly old-fashioned.

There are horse people, artists, gardeners, beekeepers, retired farmers, car enthusiasts, handy folk who can fix almost anything, and people who’ve lived on the same properties for generations. There are also newcomers, often arriving for the same reason I did – searching for a little more space and a different pace of life.

Our local landmarks reflect this. The Reserve Anstead Cafe has become an unofficial meeting place, while WestVets cares for everything from beloved family dogs to horses. The Anstead Reserve and Moggill Conservation Park are popular with hikers, bikers and horse folk.

What binds us most isn’t politics, profession or background, but our relationship with the landscape itself.

In 2011, when floodwaters isolated our suburb, Anstead became something of an island. Emergency services and media attention focused elsewhere, so neighbours simply got on with helping each other.

Every week, volunteers from the Pullen Pullen Catchments Group restore native bushland at the Anstead Reserve.

Unlike large revegetation projects, we use the Bradley Method: a deceptively simple approach that begins by caring for healthy patches of existing bush. We gently remove invasive weeds by hand, allowing native plants to regenerate themselves. No machinery. No herbicides. No mass planting. Just patience and careful observation.

It’s slow work – and that’s the point.

With your phone staying in your pocket, you notice tiny fungi pushing through the leaf litter, native bees swarming in the morning light, and seedlings emerging where last year there were only weeds.

Restoration happens imperceptibly, until one day you realise the forest has quietly reclaimed its ground.

When I mentioned I was writing this article, several neighbours jokingly asked whether it was wise to let too many people know about Anstead. Locals have spent years debating bypasses and bridges, usually reaching the same conclusion: we’d rather not become a shortcut to somewhere else.

It’s not because we don’t welcome visitors. We do. It’s because places like this are increasingly rare.

Brisbane is growing rapidly, and every year more habitat disappears beneath housing estates. As bushland shrinks, the wildlife vanishes and we forget what has been lost.

Here, caring for the land isn’t an abstract idea, it’s simply what many people do. Thousands of volunteer hours each year go into restoring creek lines, protecting habitat, and caring for our properties. Hidden among these eucalypt woodlands and dry rainforests is an astonishing diversity of wildlife, including the tiny, endangered collared delma, a legless lizard found only in this patch of south-east Queensland.

That’s what Anstead has taught me after all these years. Home isn’t simply the place where we live, it’s the place we care for and that cares for us in return.