Bloodwood
It may not necessarily have anything to do with Townsville, North Queensland or the early days of James Cook University, but I'm regularly surprised where people I'd run across back in the day have turned up.
Long term Pacific correspondent for the ABC, ABC art critic, University Vice-chancellor, and bass players with iconic Sydney new wave /punk bands are a couple of examples that spring to mind, and I can now add a five-star wine maker to the list.
As I said, it may not necessarily have anything to do with a particular place and time, but I suspect that the line from an old Elvin Bishop track Well it's a long way to where I come from/ and it's a good place to be away from has something to do with the post-seventies Townsville/JCUNQ Diaspora.
When I get to have a yarn to Stephen and Rhonda Doyle I might be able to fill in the details that explain how the bloke I remember as the writer of a couple of songs about Soul Singer Sammy, Ned the Kangaroo and Bill the Porcupine (with the latter as a significant forty-year ear-worm) ended up making wine in Orange. I know the story’s more or less there on their website, but you can’t ask a website questions, can you?
It's a small world and it continues to shrink.
These things turn up often enough to ensure that when I spot a name that looks familiar I'll do a quick spot check (the inevitable Google search) just to be sure.
But the trail that connected me to Bloodwood involves more than a little bit of coincidence. I didn't sign up for the electronic version of Halliday's Australian Wine Companion so I could get a free copy of the hard-back Australian Wine Encyclopaedia. It was a major shock when the Merry Frockster delivered the mail he'd collected while we were away in W.A. and I found that I was now the bemused owner of this handy reference volume.
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