“When I'm dead and gone, what I want to leave behind is my story and this environment,” the late Alexandra Rezko said to Orange City Life outside her Huntley home some three years ago.

Alex, who passed away on September 24 this year, had spent almost her entire life in Huntley and was fiercely protective of her much-loved little corner of the globe.

She had contacted Orange City Life back in 2022 in a bid to help her preserve the story of her father, Mikolaj Rezko, a Belarusian migrant who brought his young family across the world in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Alex was just four when she arrived in Australia with her family. The Rezkos initially settled in a migrant camp at Parkes but found a home in a humble wooden shack alongside the railway line at Huntley.

Mikolaj worked as a railway fettler, and through plenty of tough times, the family built a new life in Huntley.

“Australia took us in, Orange welcomed us, but Huntley nurtured us,” Alex told Orange City Life, while showing us the former family home in Huntley three years ago this month.

“When we came, it was little better than a cow shed, but we never complained. We had it tough, but my father said, ‘We've found peace here, and that's what we should be grateful for.”

Over many years, Alex had turned her land at Huntley into a memorial to her family’s story, planting hundreds of trees and installing numerous hand-painted signs detailing the dates and events of importance to her family.

“I'm planning for my end in a sense,” she had said to us, trying to find the right words to explain what drove her to hold on so tightly to the memories of the lives that had been lived there.

“Once I go, if I don't tell the story, no one will know,” she said.

But the family story Alex so doggedly worked to preserve is set to live on, thanks to Orange-based employment and training organisation OCTEC

The organisation, which has a history of purchasing and preserving heritage buildings like the Croagh Patrick mansion and former Orange town hall, has bought the former home of Rezkos and plans to make the surrounding land a reserve open to the public.

OCTEC board member and former Orange Mayor Reg Kidd said interpretive signage will be installed to tell the story of the Rezko family and their life in Australia.

The land, which borders the OCTEC-run Huntley Berry Farm, will be known as “Rezko Reserve”, he said.

“We decided to purchase the Fettler's cottage and negotiate the lease of the land around it… because we think it's of heritage and historic value,” Mr Kidd said.

“The story of an immigrant family from war-torn Europe, who came to live here with two small children… No running water, no electricity, no other facilities - it’s an incredible story.

“I think it'll be a great asset for Orange, for people to go out and have a picnic with their kids and learn a bit about that part of our history and the important part immigrants have played in this community.”