Peter Corris - Taking Care of Business

The day was clear and warm and a scattering of people, all driving better cars than mine, had chosen to avail themselves of the opportunity to look at the vines and sample the plonk. Probably to buy some as well. I hadn’t read the sign closely enough. The brochure I was handed as soon as I parked indicated that a visit involved a tour with a guide. The guy handing out the brochures, an athletic-looking young man in a white overall, ushered the eight or ten of us under a marquee and introduced us to Carly Braithwaite, our guide.

Carly was a tall, mid-twenties, good-looking blonde in a white silk blouse, tight jeans and designer sneakers. Her accent was pure TV-presenter, but her smile and mannerisms were natural and unaffected. She showed us around the lower slopes of vines and some experimental plots, led us through the crushing and fermenting plants, talking the whole time about plantings and vintages and blendings, until we ended up in a cool, shady area with benches and seats and bottles and glasses. All the technical stuff went in one ear and out the other but I was happy to taste some whites and reds and was prepared to give serious consideration to buying a case or two if the price was right. The most interesting moments had come when I spotted Bobby Gravas’ 4WD in the staff car park and Bobby himself, in serious conversation with a couple of other men on the steps of a demountable building that was probably an office.

Like some of the other visitors, I had a camera with me and Carly didn’t object to us taking photos. I took a few shots of the vine slopes and the hills beyond and managed a quick one of the group of men. I chatted to a few of the visitors as they trotted out the wine in those tiny plastic glasses they use. They were all from other parts, Sydney, Canberra and further afield. All wine buffs so that their conversation quickly bored me. Just one overheard exchange took my interest.

‘More like a Hunter,’ a tall, grey-haired type said after rolling some red around in his mouth.

His companion, a roly-poly, red-faced character, nodded. ‘Yes. You know, Charles, I’d expect them to put out more product.’ He swilled the few drops left. ‘This is jolly good but I’ve never seen much of it around.’

‘Mmm.’ Charles swallowed appreciatively. ‘Not so big, is it?’

‘My bump of country,’ the fat man tapped the brochure, ‘tells me there must be more land over that hill.’

Charles accepted a white. ‘Wouldn’t show us that, would they? Wouldn’t be hill crest, would it?’

They laughed at this biting wit. I sampled a couple of reds and whites and bought a case of the semillon for a reasonable price, paying cash. Carly worked hard on Charles and I saw him detaching his credit card from his wallet as I was leaving. I didn’t see Bobby again, but his car was still there.

I drove back to Goulburn, booked into the same motel and plugged the digital camera into my laptop. I got the images up and scanned the wide angle, long range pictures closely. I’m no countryman and it was hard to tell, but I got a sense of the vineyard being somehow enclosed by stands of trees at the back and the far corners. I looked at the brochure claiming that the Hillcrest vineyard covered one hundred and thirty-five acres. I looked at the pictures again, but had no idea what that amount of land looked like. Still, it sounded as if Charles and Fatty knew what they were talking about.

Bobby’s companions on the steps of the demountable looked just the way they should-one in a shirt and tie, another in work clothes, a third carrying his suit jacket over his arm, and Bobby. Nothing there, but useful to have them on file.

I drove into Goulburn and paid a visit to the council office where the plans for the district were filed. I said I was interested in buying property and indicated the area I wanted. A folio volume contained the subdivisions in the relevant parishes, along with contour maps, and I worked my way through them until I got to the block occupied by the Hillcrest Winery. I’d had some experience in interpreting contour maps back in my army days when we went on bivouacs and mock assaults. Charles was right-there was a sizeable chunk of sloping land beyond what Carly had shown us. And it was bordered on three sides by a large tract of unoccupied crown land and a deep gully on the fourth.

Okay, so Hillcrest had more land than you could easily see and they weren’t saying anything about it. Didn’t necessarily mean much. The extra acres could be lying fallow, or being prepared for planting, or having an irrigation system installed. What did I know about viticulture? But Bobby was there in some capacity and he was in the money and lying to his father. There could be other explanations, but I had to get a look at what was going on over the hill.

Still in the council building, I paid a few dollars for a couple of topographical maps. I bought a sandwich and a six-pack and went back to the motel to pore over the charts. It could have been worse. The crown land behind the Hillcrest property sloped upward and was pretty heavily wooded. There looked to be about five kilometres of it to get through, depending on whether I could access the couple of fire trails marked on the map. Say five kilometres, say a four-hour trek, barring accidents.

I spent the afternoon buying certain items. Then I found a gym with a pool and did some light work, mostly stretching, before swimming twenty laps at a leisurely pace. I ate a light meal in a cafe, drank half of one of the bottles of white I’d stuck in the motel fridge and paid my bill, telling the manager I’d be leaving at dawn. Early to bed, a few pages of James Lee Burke and goodnight.

I left the motel at first light and drove until I reckoned I was at the edge of the crown land behind Hillcrest, I drove slowly along and spotted a fire trail that took me about a kilometre into the bush before it became too rough for an ordinary car. I got out and pulled on the backpack containing my mobile phone, a water bottle, some chocolate and my Smith amp; Wesson. 38. I’d bought the backpack in Goulburn along with the hiking boots on my feet. The jeans and old army shirt I already had.

The army training was a long time ago, but my sense of direction had always been good. The sky was clear and the sun is the best directional guide you can have. I followed the rough track as far as I could until it veered off in a direction I didn’t want to go. Then it was a matter of pushing through the scrub, hacking in spots with my newly acquired bush knife. After a while the going was uphill and hard and the day heated up quickly as the sun rose higher.

I made several stops to check the direction and to catch my breath and it was close to 11 am when I broke through a patch of scrub and encountered a three-strand wire fence strung between tall, well hammered in star pickets. The cultivated area stretching ahead of me looked to be about the size of the Hillcrest Winery proper-say, sixty acres, give or take. The bushes stood in orderly rows and there were wide paths throughout, presumably to admit machinery. Pipes ran along the ground indicating a thorough irrigation network. Although I’d smoked plenty of the stuff in my time, I’d never seen a tobacco plant and had no idea what one looked like. But these bushes weren’t grapevines and they weren’t marijuana.

I took some photos of the crop and the irrigation equipment and the couple of sheds grouped together along one side of the plantation. I had a few big swigs of water, ate some chocolate and worked my way back through the bush to my car. Much easier going downhill and with the trail already blazed. I drove back to the Hillcrest just in time to see Bobby’s car leaving. He was headed further west rather than back to Goulburn so I followed him as before. Within ten kilometres he turned off along a feeder road. I hung back and then followed his trail of dust. The trail ended at the Wilson Creek Winery.