Sailing ships came this way last century, beating up from Antarctic waters, following the Great Circle route from England over thousands of miles of inhospitable sea. It was a place of wind-flattened cypress pines and small-windowed weatherboard houses — cold, wet and miserable for much of the year. Today it was impossible to imagine storms and wreckage, though. The air was warm and still. In sheltered places it was hot. The sea heaved with a rainbow oiliness under a diffuse, hazy sun, with swathes of kelp in glassy rockpools, and basaltic, cone-shaped rocks glittering with fringes of salt. It was full spring, with apple trees flowering on roadsides, hawthorn bushes ablaze with white blossom, and carpets of yellow capeweed on hillsides. They were in one of the few parts of Australia with reliable rainfall. March flies buzzed around bog-holes. Wild turnip was in flower. A flow of milky-warm air moved across undulating, treeless pasture, where creeks held rioting watercress, and fencelines offered milk thistle.
