“We tell stories,” Michael said, explaining their creative promotional work. They have lived in Australia, New Zealand, London, Oregon, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Brooklyn. Now, they are living in the tiny Essex County hamlet of New Russia.

“The local people have been so warm and welcoming,” Annette said.

At the door of their big white house, which is flanked by three barns and three outbuildings, Salty, the 9-year-old English setter, enthusiastically greets guests. Annette and Michael lead the way through a room built during the Civil War era. They apologize for what they call “the mess,” but what in reality is clearly not a mess but a purposeful work site, a serious project in progress.

In other rooms, they are painting walls and sanding and staining floors.

“We love doing up houses,” Michael said. Apartments, condos, houses. It’s one of their things, even though they do not often stay around to enjoy the fruits of their labor for long.

Friends in other parts of the world have questioned this choice. Why New Russia? For an answer, Michael used a drone-mounted camera to make a video of their home and 140-acre property, with a snow-covered mountain view, and sent it out. Their friends quit asking.

There are two working fireplaces in the house. A bobcat sometimes comes down from its hill to visit their yard. They now have room to take their “stuff” out of storage.

They are naming the property Camp Awaiti, meaning “Little Brook” or “Little River” in the Maori language. Michael says the name is an homage to his father’s northern New Zealand property with the same name, as well as to the brook that runs behind their new home.

Before coming to the Adirondacks, Michael and Annette were living in a condo in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which they were of course doing up. They had just left Hong Kong, where Michael had been working for a global ad agency as chief creative officer of its Hong Kong office.

In January and February 2020, the novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, had begun to spread in Asia.

“We heard from friends in Shanghai, get ready, it’s coming.”

Forewarned, Annette and Michael began to mask earlier than others in their neighborhood. They were an unusual sight in their welding glasses and masks. Bedford-Stuyvesant went from noisy to eerily quiet as the virus took over New York.

In their Bedford-Stuyvesant supermarket, shelves were not empty, because for the most part local residents did not have the money to buy up merchandise in bulk. At 7 every evening they went up to their roof and joined in with rooftop neighbors to bang pots and pans, making noise to thank the essential workers who dealt with COVID every day. Annette had a megaphone.

In February 2020, their friend Doug McKeige asked for their help with a start-up media company, The Climate Capitalist. McKeige, with a 20-year career as a securities litigation lawyer in New York City, led the creation of the Center for Environmental Law at Tulane Law School and has worked for environmental causes for Long Island Sound and the Adirondack Park.

“There is no greater imperative driving investment decisions today than climate change,” McKeige wrote in the first issue of The Climate Capitalist.

McKeige shows investors that clean energy is not just for “greenies.”

“The role The Climate Capitalist plays is to make investors aware of opportunities that are just as rewarding, but that also help the planet,” Annette explained.

For the past two years, Annette and Michael have added graphics, produced videos and in other ways contributed to The Climate Capitalist weekly newsletter. Producing the newsletter is a staff effort. “It’s something we are very proud of,” they agree.

McKeige and his wife Marie invited them to come to Keene Valley to escape the city during the pandemic. Annette packed for a week; they stayed three months.

In late 2020, they returned to Brooklyn, sold their condo and moved to Keene Valley.

“We met Ducted Wind Turbines through The Climate Capitalist,” Annette said. “We created a video story about their installation of a turbine at Asgaard Farm … then created a version for them and a video and presentation material for them to take to investors. They really are a special company that will make a difference. Ken Visser, the aeronautics engineer who invented their turbine, is a genius. He cracked the code on small wind turbines that people have been trying to figure out for decades.”

On dogs: Michael: “We don’t deserve them.”

On music: Annette, a soprano, had opera training, while Michael started New Zealand’s first Punk rock band, the Scavengers, during art school. Annette did not perform as an opera singer. Just Gilbert and Sullivan.

Annette and Michael have worked on many creative projects around the world. A brief sampling follows.

In May 1990, Annette, born in Australia, and Michael, born in London but raised in New Zealand, met on an Air New Zealand TV commercial shoot, she as the producer, he as the creative director who wrote the ad. They kept in touch, and 18 months later they began a relationship. In January 1993, they married on Bedarra Island in the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia.

Michael has worked in Portland, Oregon, Sydney, Australia and Shanghai, China as a creative director for Wieden Kennedy, an independent global advertising company best known for its work for Nike. He created Nike advertising for the 2000 and 2012 Olympics, developing and overseeing creative projects from conception to execution.

Annette was a producer for Australia’s renowned production company, Film Graphics. She then co-founded Sydney’s leading kids’ talent agency.

Michael and Annette started The Memory House, a company that creates feature film quality family history documentaries and large format hand made books, enshrining family history and stories for future generations.

“We are two southern birds that wandered farther north than intended,” Michael said.

Where to next? Stay tuned.