The Still Of Southern Winter

Sometimes don’t you feel as though you want some real quiet? You know, that perfectly still early morning, where the thick mists make no sound as they hang and gather in the rolling pastures, along the tree line, down in the vales...

A seriously good modern wine

Make no mistake, when people like LVMH buy a winery like the South Western Australian Cape Mentelle Wines, the place is already a highly developed, modern, technically advanced piece of the civilized world. Sure it’s a very beautiful place – the winery itself – and pretty peaceful too. And let me tell you the wines and the food they prepare down there are staggeringly wonderful!

But there is also something to be said for sheer, absolute wilderness – those places where no one goes.

Such places still exist here in Western Australia. And once you get here, if you ever do get here, it takes only a few minutes after you step out of your car before you realise that this place is pristine: kookaburras will come right up to you and look you over to see what the hell this new visitor is all about, and so will the kangaroos. They aren’t afraid of humans because no humans come here.

It’s about to be Spring here in Australia and the mad crowds of the Melbourne Thoroughbred Racing Carnival are going to turn up on that first Tuesday in November for the world’s best two-mile race.

Not saying where this actually is!

Lost in all the buzz will be the years and days gone by, when whalers worked the Southern-most coasts. Now, there are still whales but no whalers. And very few people. In some places there are no people at all. Western Australia is a million square miles. And most of it empty. And some of it is just too far away even for the most ardent tourist and wanderer to go just to get some silence. But my god, what silence. Actually I can hear the condensation of the fog or the mist burble and hiss when it hits the outside camp fire in the cold early morning...