Nathaniel James Baker

Birth and Early Childhood

Nathaniel James Baker was born on 14 February 1996 at the Lyell McEwin Hospital in Elizabeth, the third child and second son of Jonathan Edward Baker and Evelyn Margaret Dawson Baker. His Valentine's Day birth became a minor family joke—the quiet, reserved boy who seemed least suited to a holiday celebrating romantic expression, though the irony would deepen in ways his family couldn't anticipate.

His arrival positioned him in the increasingly crowded middle of the Baker sibling constellation. Amelia, nearly three, had already established herself as the responsible eldest. Benjamin, eighteen months older, was transitioning from toddler to young child. Behind Nathaniel, four more siblings would follow in quick succession: Samuel in 1997, Rebecca in 1998, Lydia in 2000, and Chloe in 2001. By the time Nathaniel entered primary school, he was one of seven, a position that granted neither the authority of the older children nor the attention lavished on the younger ones.

The Smithfield house that shaped his childhood was characterised by constant motion and competing demands. Nathaniel learned early that space—physical and emotional—was a limited resource requiring careful navigation. He developed strategies for carving out solitude within chaos: retreating to corners with books about machines and systems, finding satisfaction in the predictable behaviour of mechanical objects when human dynamics felt overwhelming. His father's workshop offered particular refuge, though Nathaniel was drawn less to the woodworking that engaged Jonathan than to the tools themselves—their precise functions, their logical design, their reliability.

His relationship with his parents reflected the practicalities of large-family life. His mother Evelyn, managing seven children alongside Relief Society responsibilities, distributed her attention according to need, and Nathaniel's needs were rarely urgent. He wasn't the child who demanded intervention; he solved his own problems or did without. This self-sufficiency pleased his parents without particularly engaging them, a pattern that would persist into adulthood.

His father Jonathan recognised something familiar in Nathaniel's methodical temperament—the same preference for systems over spontaneity, for predictable outcomes over emotional improvisation. Their connection expressed itself through parallel activity rather than conversation: working together on household projects, examining how things functioned, sharing the satisfaction of problems solved through careful analysis. It was a limited form of intimacy, but genuine within its constraints.

Growing Up in the Middle

Nathaniel's position as third of seven children granted him a particular kind of freedom that carried corresponding costs. He was old enough to avoid the intensive supervision directed at younger siblings, young enough to escape the responsibility heaped upon Amelia and, to a lesser extent, Benjamin. This middle-ground existence suited his temperament whilst also reinforcing his tendency toward isolation.

He was never the sibling who organised games or resolved conflicts; that was Amelia's territory. He wasn't the one who pushed boundaries or required correction; Samuel would claim that role. Nathaniel existed in the comfortable anonymity of adequacy—present but not prominent, contributing but not leading, reliable without being remarkable. Teachers' reports consistently noted his competence whilst struggling to articulate distinguishing characteristics. He was the child who slipped through categories, neither problem nor prodigy.

His closest sibling relationship, such as it was, developed with Samuel, seventeen months his junior. The two boys shared a bedroom through childhood, developing the practical cooperation that comes from sustained proximity. They weren't emotionally intimate—neither boy possessed the vocabulary or inclination for such connection—but they understood each other's rhythms, respected each other's boundaries, and maintained a functional alliance against the perceived encroachments of sisters and parental expectations.

His relationships with his sisters were more distant, shaped by the gender divisions that characterised their household. Amelia had functioned as a second mother during his earliest years, competent and slightly intimidating. Rebecca, Lydia, and Chloe occupied a separate sphere of feminine interests and activities that Nathaniel observed without engaging. He felt protective of them in an abstract way—particularly Chloe, the youngest, whose quiet intensity reminded him of his own childhood self—but protection expressed itself through background vigilance rather than active involvement.

What Nathaniel couldn't articulate, even to himself during those years, was the growing awareness that he was different in ways his family's faith framework couldn't accommodate. The crushes his peers discussed, the trajectory toward dating and eventual temple marriage that structured LDS youth programming—none of it aligned with his internal experience. He learned to perform expected responses whilst burying authentic ones, a skill that would serve him professionally whilst exacting personal costs he wouldn't fully understand until adulthood.

Education and the Path to Technology

Nathaniel attended Smithfield Primary School and then Craigmore High School, following the path his older siblings had established. His academic trajectory was unremarkable—consistently adequate, occasionally good, never outstanding or concerning enough to attract focused attention. He passed through the educational system like water through a filter, leaving minimal trace.

His discovery of technology came not through dramatic revelation but through gradual recognition. Computers made sense to him in ways that human interactions didn't. They operated according to discoverable rules; their problems had identifiable causes; their solutions could be verified through testing. When the family acquired their first home computer in the mid-2000s, Nathaniel became its de facto administrator, troubleshooting issues and maintaining functionality whilst his siblings merely used the machine without understanding it.

By high school, his technical aptitude had become obvious enough that teachers directed him toward information technology electives. He found unexpected satisfaction in the work: diagnosing system failures, understanding network architecture, learning the logical structures underlying digital operations. Here was a domain where his preference for systems over spontaneity constituted an advantage rather than a limitation.

The question of university arose during his final years of high school with less intensity than it had for his siblings. Amelia had pursued teaching; Benjamin was completing an accounting degree. But Nathaniel felt no particular calling to higher education, no academic passion that demanded formal cultivation. His interests were practical rather than theoretical, applied rather than abstract. University seemed like an expensive detour from work he could learn through doing.

His decision to pursue vocational training rather than university disappointed his parents mildly without surprising them. They had learned to recognise that their children would follow different paths; not every Baker was destined for tertiary education. Nathaniel enrolled in a Certificate IV in Information Technology through TAFE SA, completing the qualification whilst working part-time in retail. The combination provided both credential and practical experience, establishing foundations for the career that would follow.

Career and Professional Life

Nathaniel's entry into professional IT work came through a series of positions that gradually refined his expertise. His first role, providing technical support for a small business in Adelaide's northern suburbs, taught him the patience required to assist users whose technical understanding varied wildly. He learned to translate complex concepts into accessible language, to diagnose problems through systematic questioning, to maintain calm whilst users expressed frustration with machines that weren't actually malfunctioning.

By his early twenties, he had secured a position as an IT support technician with a medium-sized company in Port Adelaide, the industrial suburb that would become his professional home. The work suited his temperament: methodical problem-solving, logical troubleshooting, the satisfaction of restoring functionality to systems that had failed. He wasn't ambitious in conventional terms—he had no desire for management or strategic roles—but he was genuinely good at the technical work, and that competence provided its own form of professional security.

Port Adelaide itself held unexpected appeal. The working-class suburb, with its industrial heritage and practical character, felt more comfortable than the aspirational spaces his siblings were inhabiting. Here, people valued function over form, results over credentials, reliability over innovation. Nathaniel's quiet competence registered as virtue rather than limitation; his reserve was interpreted as professionalism rather than coldness.

His work brought modest satisfaction without particular passion. He solved problems, maintained systems, helped users navigate technical challenges—contributions that mattered without mattering dramatically. Some days felt meaningful; others felt merely necessary. He had no illusions about his career representing a calling, but it was honest work that paid adequately and didn't require him to be someone he wasn't.

What Port Adelaide couldn't provide was space for the parts of himself he had learned to suppress. The suburb's practical masculinity, whilst comfortable professionally, offered no pathway toward the personal authenticity he increasingly recognised he needed. He lived alone, maintained professional relationships without developing intimate ones, and wondered sometimes whether this half-life was all he could expect.

Faith and Its Complications

Nathaniel's relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was shaped by contradictions he couldn't resolve within its doctrinal framework. He attended faithfully, served when called, participated in the rituals and rhythms that had structured his entire life. But his engagement carried weight his family couldn't perceive—the knowledge that his authentic self was incompatible with the future the Church prescribed.

The LDS teachings on homosexuality were unambiguous during Nathaniel's adolescence and young adulthood. Same-sex attraction was framed as a challenge to be overcome, a trial to be endured, a deviation from the eternal plan of families sealed in temple marriages. Nathaniel absorbed these messages whilst recognising, with growing certainty, that they described him. The dissonance between who he was and who his faith required him to be became a constant, low-grade ache he learned to manage rather than resolve.

His involvement in LDS youth mentorship emerged from this complicated position. The calling came during his early twenties, a request to help teach young men in the ward's youth programme. Nathaniel accepted partly from duty, partly from genuine desire to offer something he had needed and never received: an adult who took young people seriously without demanding conformity. His technical knowledge provided a language of connection—teaching digital literacy, discussing gaming, helping navigate technological challenges—but his deeper motivation was creating space where teenagers could feel seen without being evaluated.

He wondered sometimes whether any of the young men he mentored carried similar secrets, whether his presence offered silent reassurance that survival was possible even when belonging felt impossible. He couldn't say anything explicit—his own position was too precarious—but he could model a different kind of masculine presence: quiet, competent, unmarried without being pressured, existing outside the expected timeline without apparent crisis.

This ministry became his primary expression of faith—service that felt meaningful even when doctrine felt condemning. The teenagers he worked with didn't require him to testify with conviction he couldn't muster; they required him to be present, helpful, respectful of their emerging autonomy. It was a form of contribution he could perform honestly, giving to others what he wished someone had given him.

The 2018 Crisis and the Choice to Follow

The events that drew the Baker family toward Clivilius reached Nathaniel through the same fragmented channels as his siblings: partial conversations, unexplained gatherings, a growing sense that his parents possessed knowledge they weren't fully sharing. He registered the changes without understanding them—his mother's increased intensity, his father's unusual willingness to defer to spiritual direction, the strange atmosphere that settled over the household during the latter half of 2018.

Chloe's involvement was evident even to Nathaniel's limited social perception. His youngest sister, already inclined toward quiet intensity, had become preoccupied with something he couldn't identify. Her relationship with Charles Smith seemed entangled with whatever was happening. Nathaniel observed without comprehending, a familiar position that felt more frustrating than usual given the apparent stakes.

When his parents announced their intention to relocate in early 2019, Nathaniel faced a choice he hadn't anticipated. He was twenty-three, established in his Port Adelaide career, living a life that was functional if not fulfilling. The practical arguments for staying were substantial: his job, his apartment, the familiar technical landscape he had learned to navigate. His older siblings Amelia and Benjamin had already indicated they would remain—established careers, Amelia's marriage and children, roots too deep to transplant. Lydia would stay for her university studies.

But Nathaniel also recognised that his Adelaide life, whilst adequate, wasn't leading anywhere he wanted to go. He had built professional competence within a community that could never fully know him, maintained family relationships structured around secrets he couldn't share, constructed an existence defined more by what he concealed than what he expressed. The prospect of continuing that life indefinitely felt less like stability than like slow suffocation.

He went because staying required more conviction than following, because his Adelaide life wasn't worth preserving at the cost of family connection, because somewhere beneath his practical calculations lay hope that a different world might offer different possibilities. It wasn't faith that carried him to Clivilius; it was the recognition that he had little to lose and perhaps something to gain.

Arrival in Bixbus and Meeting James

The transition to Clivilius stripped away the professional identity Nathaniel had spent years constructing. His IT expertise, developed within Earth's specific technological ecosystem, required translation for a world with different systems and different needs. He wasn't useless—his methodical approach to problem-solving transferred across contexts—but he also wasn't the competent professional he had been in Port Adelaide. He was, once again, someone learning rather than someone knowing.

The settlement of Bixbus, where his family initially resided, was itself in early stages of development. Founded in 2018, the community was still establishing infrastructure, integrating settlers from various backgrounds, and building connections with older settlements like Brierly. The atmosphere was one of collective improvisation—everyone contributing whatever skills they possessed toward shared survival and gradual flourishing.

It was in this context that Nathaniel met James Arthur Carrington.

James had arrived in Bixbus several months before the Baker family, part of the initial relocation of younger Brierly settlers who came to assist with the new settlement's development. A botanist and agricultural innovator, he was working to establish sustainable farming practices in Bixbus's challenging landscape. His expertise in irrigation and soil management had made him invaluable to the settlement's food security efforts.

Their first interaction was practical: James needed help configuring communication equipment for coordinating agricultural teams across dispersed growing sites. Nathaniel's technical skills, though developed in a different context, proved applicable. He spent several days working alongside James, troubleshooting systems and establishing protocols. The work was familiar; the company was not.

James was unlike anyone Nathaniel had known in his Adelaide life. Warm without being overwhelming, patient with Nathaniel's reserve, comfortable with silence but equally comfortable filling it with stories about Brierly's history, his family's botanical legacy, the fiddle tunes he was learning from his grandmother's old notation books. He didn't demand emotional reciprocity; he simply offered connection and waited to see if it would be received.

What struck Nathaniel most was James's ease with himself—a quality Nathaniel had never managed to develop. James moved through the world without apparent internal conflict, his identity integrated rather than compartmentalised. When Nathaniel eventually understood that James was gay, that this was simply known and accepted in Brierly's community, something shifted in his understanding of what life could look like.

Building a Life Together

The relationship developed gradually, which suited both their temperaments. Nathaniel had spent so long suppressing authentic connection that he didn't know how to pursue it; James had the patience to let trust build through accumulated small interactions rather than dramatic declarations. They worked together on agricultural technology projects. They shared meals. James played fiddle whilst Nathaniel listened, learning to receive beauty without analysing it.

The absence of institutional religion in Clivilius removed frameworks that had both structured and constrained Nathaniel's sense of possibility. There was no Church here prescribing relationship templates, no doctrine declaring his desires disordered, no community monitoring his conformity to expected timelines. What remained was simpler: people building lives together based on mutual care and shared purpose. James's family in Brierly had always operated this way; for Nathaniel, it was revelation.

Their partnership formalised not through ceremony but through accumulation—shared living space, integrated daily rhythms, the quiet assumption by others that they belonged together. Clivilius didn't require marriage to recognise commitment; it simply observed how people treated each other and drew appropriate conclusions. Nathaniel found this approach more honest than the elaborate rituals he had grown up expecting to perform.

His family's response varied. His parents, still processing their own transition to a world that challenged many assumptions, needed time to adjust. His mother Evelyn, whose faith had always emphasised family unity, eventually prioritised relationship over doctrine—choosing her son over theological positions that would cost her his presence. His father Jonathan, characteristically, said little but continued showing up, his acceptance expressed through action rather than words. His siblings mostly shrugged; they had suspected for years, and confirmation simply moved knowledge from implicit to explicit.

The relationship with James also transformed Nathaniel's relationship with himself. He learned, slowly, to express affection rather than merely feeling it. He learned to receive care without suspicion. He learned that his reserve, whilst genuine, didn't have to be absolute—that intimacy was possible for someone who had believed himself incapable of it. James didn't fix him; James simply provided conditions in which healing could occur.

Becoming Parents

The children came to them through tragedy. In 2022, a settlement several days' travel from Bixbus failed catastrophically—a combination of crop disease, structural problems, and leadership collapse that left its population scattered and its most vulnerable members in need of placement. Among the refugees were three siblings: Marcus, aged seven; Elena, aged five; and Thomas, aged three. Their parents had died in the settlement's final desperate months. They needed a home.

Nathaniel and James weren't the obvious choice. They were relatively new as a couple, still establishing their own household patterns. But the children's case worker—observing James's gentleness with young people in Bixbus and Nathaniel's quiet reliability—approached them about temporary fostering. Temporary became permanent when it became clear that these children, already traumatised by loss and displacement, needed stability more than they needed optimal theoretical placements.

Parenthood arrived not as fulfilment of lifelong desire but as response to immediate need. Nathaniel had never imagined himself as a father; the LDS framework he'd grown up within offered no pathway for gay men to parent, and he had suppressed the longing before it could fully form. Now, faced with three children who needed what he could provide, he discovered capacities he hadn't known he possessed.

His methodical nature, which had sometimes manifested as emotional distance, proved useful with children who needed predictability after chaos. He established routines, maintained consistency, provided the structural reliability that helped Marcus, Elena, and Thomas feel safe. James contributed warmth and creativity—music, stories, the patient teaching of plant names and growth cycles. Together, they offered complementary gifts: Nathaniel's steadiness and James's tenderness, creating a household where damaged children could begin to heal.

The work was harder than either had anticipated. Trauma doesn't resolve through good intentions; the children's grief and fear surfaced in difficult behaviours, sleep disruptions, attachment struggles that tested both men's patience and resources. But they persisted, learning as they went, accepting help from family and community, building competence through practice rather than preparation.

The Move to Brierly

By 2025, the household had stabilised enough to consider longer-term futures. James had always intended to return to Brierly eventually—his roots there ran deep, and his expertise in viticulture and sustainable agriculture was needed as the settlement integrated modern techniques with traditional practices. The question was whether Nathaniel and the children could transplant.

The decision emerged through conversation rather than crisis. Brierly offered things Bixbus couldn't: established community, agricultural heritage, the particular beauty of vineyards and river landscape that James had described throughout their relationship. It also offered need for Nathaniel's skills—the settlement's infrastructure was updating, and technical expertise was valuable. The children, now more secure, could adapt to new surroundings with their family unit intact.

They relocated in March of 2025, joining the community James had left seven years earlier. For James, it was homecoming—familiar faces, family connections, landscapes he had known since childhood. For Nathaniel, it was another transition, but one undertaken from security rather than desperation. He had a partner, children, skills that were wanted, a place in a community that would come to know him as James's partner and the children's father before learning anything about his complicated history.

Brierly itself was changing, its long isolation giving way to connection with Bixbus and the broader network of Clivilius settlements. The traditional agricultural community was incorporating new technologies, new settlers, new possibilities. Nathaniel's role—supporting technical infrastructure whilst respecting established practices—suited his temperament. He wasn't transforming Brierly; he was helping it evolve on its own terms.