WITH the third annual Wine Arts and Roses festival beginning this Saturday it is a good time to reflect on the changing landscape of the Southern Highlands during the last couple of decades. We have always had artists and we have always had roses, but the upsurge in grape growing has been staggering.
I REMEMBER meeting Kim Moginie on his Joadja property in the early 1980s wearing my council hat while doing farmland rating inspections. Kim had a brave plan to grow grapes on the Southern Highlands when nobody else had even contemplated the notion. Not surprising given our cold frosty climate. But Kim had faith and worked very hard to establish his vineyard in 1983.
I confess to thinking at the time Kim was a lovely bloke who knew his stuff, but I had serious doubts if his dream would bear fruit in those frosty paddocks.
Well it did. Beautiful fruit that was turned into mighty fine wine and Kim Moginie deserves to be recorded in the pioneering history of farming in the Southern Highlands as the bloke who significantly changed our agricultural landscape, by introducing a more diversified tapestry of produce to go with our sheep, cattle and potato traditions.
FROM no vineyards in 1982 there are now 66 vineyards and 16 cellar doors in the Highlands, with probably over 300 hectares under cultivation. When these grapes mature, they will produce a lot of wine – maybe somewhere near a million bottles.
Nowadays we have wine tasting, cellar doors sales, berry picking, home made preserves, sauces, vinegars, spices and salad dressings, fresh produce, road side stalls, exotic mushrooms, olives and oils, farmers markets, gourmet cheeses and exciting local taste sensations to satisfy our culinary desires. Yes our rural landscape has changed.
BUT enough of the serious stuff. Time for Dudley’s take on wine, arts and roses.
WINE: It was mid life crisis time for Dudley.
He was starting to fancy some of the attractive young married women around town and was drinking a tad too much wine. So he trotted along to the local psychologist for advice.
“If you had to give up wine or women,” asked the psychologist, “which would it be?”
“Not sure,” said Dudley thoughtfully, “I guess it’d depend on their vintage.”
ARTS: Dudley took little Georgina to the Art Gallery in Canberra where they saw a very impressive statue of a nude male.
“What is that?” asked Georgina pointing to the crown jewels.
“Nothing, nothing for you to bother about, Georgina,” stammered Dudley.
“I want one,” said Georgina.
Dudley tried to change the subject, but Georgina persisted.
“I want one just like that, dad,” she kept repeating.
At last a desperate Dudley said, “If you are a good girl and stop thinking about it now, when you grow up, you will have one.”
“And if I’m bad?” asked Georgina.
“Then,” sighed Dudley, “you will have many.”
MORE ARTS: It wasn’t often that Dudley got along to an art gallery, but Georgina had convinced him to go to the opening of a good friend’s new exhibition. As they wandered along admiring the paintings, Dudley was stunned to see his pretty daughter seductively reclining on a sofa, stark naked for the world to see on a lifelike six foot long canvas in front of him.
“That’s Georgina,” scowled Dudley to the young artist. “You’ve had my daughter up in you studio posing in the nude.”
“No I haven’t,” said the poor artist defensively. “I painted that one from memory.”
AND ROSES: Father O’Connell was tending the church garden, when Dudley walked past on his way to the pub.
“Good day mate,” said Dudley cheerily. “Your bloody roses don’t look too good.
“No Dudley, they don’t,” said Father O’Connell sadly.
“Unfortunately they suffer from a disease peculiar to this area around the church known as the black death.”
“Never heard of it,” said Dudley, looking at the healthy bush without any rose buds.
Father O’Connell smiled knowingly, “Nuns with scissors.”
YOU might catch Dudley on the Arts Studio Trail this weekend, or smelling the roses at one of the local gardens, but I reckon you’d be more likely to bump him wandering around one of those 16 cellar doors tasting the delights of the Southern Highlands.
*Geoff Goodfellow has lived his life in the Southern Highlands, works for Wingecarribee Council and is well known in local sporting and social circles.
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