Australasia > Australia > Western Australia > Margaret River > Wine > Articles > Moving and Shaking in the Redneck State

It was so hot that my silk chiffon dress stuck to the backs of my knees almost as soon as we stepped from the air-conditioned car. Reaching the Estate Marquee in the middle of the party required weaving through the corporate marquees buzzing with the excitement of Western Australia’s most renowned annual society event. The men in their tuxedos sweated in the still, humid afternoon, beads of perspiration on their foreheads. The ladies eyed the horizon still bright with evening sun desperately seeking sun-set. At our marquee, I was immediately sorry for the Englishman in the winter-weight black tuxedo. Never having experienced the cracking heat of a West Australian summer, he’d expected to get away with it at the evening event. The chilled glasses of white were not easing the pain of the sweaty evening.

Across the stream on the lawn beneath the winery, six thousand of the people lucky enough to have tickets were whiling away the afternoon with friends, lazing on favorite blankets with picnic hampers and wine. Many traded normal hats for top-hats teemed with shorts and thongs in honor of the ‘posh picnic’, and drank at the same punishing rate as those in the corporate marquees where posh really meant posh. Sounds of the bush rang out with kookaburras laughing, excited magpies screeching and the croak and ribbit of the frogs as the corks popped on the years' wine release, and the band struck the first note. ‘Welcome to the annual Leeuwin Estate Concert’ they said.

In Western Australia, the concert is the epitome of the casual life-style. Even though this event is one of the highlights in the states social calendar the locals are none too serious when it comes to prancing about in their finest – happy instead to let themselves relax over a few too many glasses of wine safe in the knowledge that the presence of the influential people keeps the coppers off the roads and provides a safe passage through what is normally the ‘booze bus’ territory.

Sprawled on our lawn hugging chairs with a newly pulled chaperone, and ants crawling in my cleavage, KD Langs voice pleaded with us to ‘wash, wash, me clean’ and went on with her deep and sexy sound ‘I can exist being caught by a kiss, I’ll grant you control of my body and soul’ to the crowd. Shameless women in the front row offered themselves to a singer reveling in the intimacy of the venue. The sun had finally sunk below the horizon and a relieving breeze blew in slowing the wine swigging and cooling the crowd. Once the last song was sung the Leeuwin kitchen rose to the challenge of catering for the hundreds of hungry socialites populating the huge dining tent set up in the space at the ends of the rows of vines, seafood piled into a mountain in the centre of the table. Oysters, fresh grilled crays, prawns and scallops of the freshest quality stock were all downed with the appropriately appreciative slurps and crunches for some of the best W.A. has to offer.

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