Former ABC Newcastle radio host Aaron Kearney has accepted a new job in Dili in East Timor.
Aaron, of Merewether, will move to the island nation with wife Karen Shrosbery and daughter Edith for at least a year.
"It's a wild adventure," he said.
Before they leave in early December, they have to empty their house, relocate and find a school for six-year-old Edith.
Aaron will be working for the Boston-based Abt Associates, an international aid contractor that runs the Australia-Timor Leste Partnership for Human Development.
"I'm heading a team there. It's a combination of mentorship, strategic direction and intergovernmental liaison," Aaron said.
"It's an Australian-Timorese co-production - a partnership."
He'll be working with a communications team on projects for nutrition, education and social protection.
"There's still a 50 per cent malnutrition rate among kids. There's a lot of debate about the real numbers, but maybe only one in 10 kids is regularly in school," he said.
"We'll also be helping out young mums and others still suffering from the brutal events of the past."
During the Indonesian occupation of East Timor [also known as Timor-Leste], "more than 200,000 Timorese lost their lives as a result of the systemic violence employed by the Indonesian military," the country's official tourism site says.
When independence dawned in 1999, the Indonesian army and militia rampaged through the country, killing people and destroying infrastructure.
Australia and other countries provided peacekeeping and police aid under the United Nations for about a decade.
Aaron has long held a fascination with Timor and "the misfortunes its people have endured".
It's a place where the Pacific meets south-east Asia - "the two places where I've done a lot of work".
"It's near Australia, but also extremely foreign to it," he said.
Aaron traces his desire to take the Timor job back to the 1990s, when he travelled and worked in Africa in his 20s.
"I saw a lot of flashpoint places like Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt," he said.
"I saw what real need looked like. I always had in the back of my head that I'd really like to do development work."
Aaron and Karen share an ambition to work in international development.
Karen, a former BBC reporter, runs the Women in News and Sport program as part of ABC International Development.
People have inquired politely about why the pair are opting for the hard route.
"We learnt over the last two years that having burgers delivered and watching Netflix isn't everything," Aaron said.
Aaron is best known locally for working for ABC Newcastle for about 15 years on the Breakfast and Drive programs.
In 2019 - the year he left the Newcastle station - he worked in 22 countries through his communications company AKS Media International.
This included a broadcast deal to stream the FIFA Women's World Cup in Pacific languages to Oceania Football Confederation countries.
He's been on quite the journey over the past five years, working with a range of high-profile organisations.
This included Oxford University, Google, FIFA, Football Federation Australia, International Cricket Council, ABC, BBC, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Department of Defence.
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