Scotch College

'Sing, like they do at Scotch'

A Country Vineyard And a Four-Speed Gearbox

The Australia Institute say 57% of the nations workers didn't take their annual leave last year. I wasn't one of them. Coming back from the Grampians I was pleased to visit Best's Great Western Winery. I had wanted to call before but you know what its like when the road's a ribbon, the cruise set to 100 and the winery is off the highway!

Work calls us on a daily basis. Forward. It calls for application and effort. We may be physically active or called on to read and write, to make wise decisions and give advice or our work may seem more routine, even rhythmic to the point of monotony, but forward requires our consistent energy and application.

We drove in. Immediately we were pleased with the old world feel. It was established in 1866. The Nursery Block had vines planted in those earliest days. Today some of these varieties no longer exist elsewhere. Evidence of hard work, the need to experiment and innovate

Getting a vineyard up and running. Overdrive. It's the gear for those times when extra effort is needed; the end of the financial or academic year, the arrival of a new baby, hospitalization, a traumatic incident; those times that require an extra effort.

Tastings took place in the oldest building.

It also served as the vineyard archives, housing artefacts and information. These communicated the sheer dimensions of the physically demanding toil involved in that early agricultural enterprise.

Henry Best's journal lay open, a ledger of daily entries from 1868 until 1880. Benwell notes 'the pages are ruled vertically in three or four columns. One is headed Self, the others by the Christian names of his workmen. The last column is headed Weather. Day by day the tasks were recorded, related by terse phrases such as, "sub soiling vines", "carting soil from creek", "vine sticks", "tie-ing", "crushing grapes"'.

More evident to me than the vertical columns however, were the emphatic horizontal lines. They occurred at regular intervals drawn across the entire page with the word Sunday written over them. On these days the weather was noted, however no work was recorded. Slow. One sensed an ordered and rhythmic life that found time for a change from work.

Watching the kids play sport, enjoying the garden; it may include other chores - cooking, cleaning, whatever, especially when they satisfy. Dining with friends, the piano, …maybe the DVD. Best's rhythmic life fashioned from the chaotic period of the gold rush something refined and elegant. The wines were delightful.

Best's Sunday contrasts starkly with today which Hugh Mackay trenchantly describes: 'We can no longer afford to waste time saying "24 hours a day, seven days a week", so we say "24-seven" instead. "September 11" has become "9-11". How efficient! Look how much time and energy we save by cutting out all those words. And for what? … Recent Australian research suggests that married couples spend, on average, 12 minutes a day talking to each other, and parents spend 40 per cent less time with their children than they did a generation ago.' Does any Scotch family think that's an encouraging sign?

Park is the gear we use least. Stop and smell the roses, reflect, try a little solitude - try being alone with your thoughts, think on the benefits love brings and you will add value to the relationships that we so easily take for granted. We present as busy all of the time. It's almost embarrassing to say we relaxed, or took a break.

The pace is telling on families and individuals. How wise the fourth commandment 'Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy'. We are invited to have a day off every week. We refuse to knock off at our peril. I wondered if Henry Best was a man of personal piety, Christian conviction seemed emphatic in his journal. This is where our spirituality is nourished; in park wonder returns, we find time to worship God. When did you last try it?

 

Graham Bradbeer
Chaplain