JENNIFER Roberts does not miss the daily battle on Sydney's choked roads.
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The qualified piano technician is enjoying reacquainting herself with country driving as she settles back into life in the Bathurst region after 20 years away.
"I would have to schedule jobs around the traffic," she said. "I'd sometimes be spending more hours on the road than working."
And now?
"Even though you might be doing a half-hour commute here to a tuning, it's a very different half-hour to city driving."
Ms Roberts has moved from Sydney to set up Narrow Fifth, a piano tuning, repairs and rebuilds business, with fellow piano technician Marcelo Costi, who has made the even more daunting relocation from tropical Darwin.
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"We chose Bathurst because it's a growing town, the gateway to Sydney," Ms Roberts said.
"I still have a lot of work in Sydney that I do, and Marcelo helps me with now, so it's a really convenient place for us to run a business.
"This is a really musical community and it's only growing, so it made sense for us to set up here and see what we can make happen."
Ms Roberts also grew up in the region.
"My family's in Oberon and I went to school here and left for 20 years," she said. "I went and studied in America and Canada and a little bit in Germany and then stayed in Sydney and it's time to come home."
Mr Costi, meanwhile, did not know much about Bathurst.
"Other than the racetrack, obviously," he said. "We did a bit of research on potential places to move to and Bathurst kept coming back. In the end, it was not difficult to choose Bathurst."
Ms Roberts and Mr Costi are working out of a shed in Oberon at the moment, but are in the process of building a workshop for Narrow Fifth at Kelso.
"It's going to be a custom-built workshop; it's going to be fully climate-controlled, with a proper hoist to lift the insides out of a piano," Ms Roberts said.
Mr Costi, who will travel to Darwin twice a year with Ms Roberts to service Charles Darwin University, the Darwin Festival and the musical community in the Northern Territory capital, has yet to experience a full Bathurst winter, but is confident he can handle it.
"I used to live in Scotland," he said. "I'm a winter creature.
"It was nice to see the hot summer come and go in a month."
