Veronika Wild

Listening to the Stars While I was doing the Southern Wine Trail I was startled to come upon the incongruous sight of a large telescope perched at the end of one of the vineyards. Beneath it was a museum dedicated to one Grote Reber, the world’s first radio astronomer. Since we normally claim anyone who so much as spent five minutes here and went on to be successful or famous, I was very surprised that I had never heard of him. Alas, the museum was closed the day I visited, but I immediately went home to look him up.  Indeed, although born in the USA, Grote Reber (1911 – 2002), inspired by the work of Karl Jansky who discovered faint radio emissions coming from the Milky Way, started building radio telescopes in 1937. In 1954 he moved to Tasmania where magnetic interference was minimal. He was not only a genius in this field but led the way in a number of others including radio carbon dating. When not listening to the stars, he studied the direction in which beans gre...

What lies behind the gate and those two hundred year -old walls? Easily overlooked among Hobart’s wealth of colonial buildings is the modest Markree House Museum.   I must have walked past its unprepossessing exterior hundreds of times without giving it a second glance, yet it is important for several reasons. Not imposing perhaps, but important for other reasons       Firstly, it marks the transition from the grand colonial mansion to the single family home which could be managed without live –in servants. Secondly, it reflects the life of an emerging affluent middle class of merchants and professionals, rather than the one consisting primarily of soldiers, landed gentry, convicts, servants and tradesmen, which preceded it. Thirdly, it embodies the principles of the Arts and Craft Movement which became popular in Europe and America in the mid C19th. This was both a revolt against the excesses of the Victorian Age and the shoddiness and soulless...

The last leaves of Autumn on the Wine Trail Tasmania is famous for its cool climate wines, so much so that even French wine maker Moet et Chandon is beginning to use Tasmanian grapes in its Australian product and Tasmanian wines have been winning prizes since 1974.  In 2013 Tasmania had 230 vineyards and 1500 hectares planted to vines. While most of it  is grown in the north of the state and there are other fine vineyards further south, in the Derwent Valley and in the east, there is a particularly high concentration of them in the Coal River Valley only about half an hour’s drive away, so I thought I would start there.   Of course if you are pressed for time, you can try them all at once at Clemens Hill in Richmond, or at the Gasworks,  in Hobart without ever having to leave town. Frogmore Vineyard   It was a glorious day for a drive  – crisp, clear and sunny, with the last few leaves still clinging to the vines. Lik...