Still wielding a chainsaw at 85: the Australians restoring nature in retirement

For a growing band of older Australians, retirement has become an unlikely second act, spent rewilding mountains, counting sea slugs and coaxing damaged country back to life Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email When Susan Downes stepped into the hallway of an old farmhouse for sale in York, Western Australia, she felt an oddly certain sense of knowing.

“Oh, this is my house,” the retired GP remembers thinking. There was just one problem: it came with 200 hectares. Widowed and with her children grown, Downes, then in her 60s, was finally able to act on a long-held wish to move to the countryside. She had…