Here I am wrapped up in my cloaks, cold itself.
Well, no. I'd got out on my bicycle today to the Ballarat Botanical Gardens in a sudden and unexpected blaze of winter sunshine. Here you're looking out from the Gardens across Lake Wendouree.
Winter's an honest time. There's no dodging the fact significant signs of life have vanished. And yet, significant signs of life are surfacing.
Bravo, Hercules, I say.
Confession: I'd got out on my bike to sweep clear the remnants of a late night spent in front of an open fire, risotto and red in hand. Did I deserve such beauty?
There are Sequoias and Redwoods and Firs here, here in this Victorian, ordered space, one of my very favourite places in the world, where not so long ago others promenaded without a bicycle, but perhaps too with a little hangover and with a sense of occasion.
What joy it was to see these Hellebores up. Did I say that Ballarat is the coldest place in the world? Forget Scotland, forget Antarctica...remember Ballarat.
Here's my favourite ever flower, one of the Banksias, blooming in the cold as so many of us natives do.
And another. This is winter? You could have fooled me and my heating bill.
I AM THE LION, warm and warming, he says...
...however cool the prospect...
