She'll be Apples!
Have you ever heard someone say that? It means the same thing as that well-known Australian saying; "She'll be right, mate!".
I don't know who "she" might be, but it doesn't matter. I'm here to talk about apples and especially about old apples.
No, no! I don't mean mouldy old fruit that goes squish when you tread on it! I mean old apples like old roses. Apples that were grown a hundred years ago.
Tasmania earned the name of the Apple Isle because it was a good place to grow apples. Does that mean it's like the Garden of Eden? Well, not exactly (although it does have some serpents). What it does have is a good climate for apple trees. It also has good soil around the coast.
Apples grow along the north west coast, and also down south near the Huon River. There are all kinds of apple-related tourist attractions "down the Huon". That's Tassie-speak for "the river valley near the Huon River, not far from Huonville and Geevestone". If you'd like to see more about this area, go to this url http://www.tased.edu.au/tot/s/huonville....
Different kinds of apples go in and out of fashion and I am lucky enough to have seen, and eaten, some apples that have been out of fashion for a long, long time. During the early part of the Twentieth Century, my great grandparents had an orchard on the north west coast. Some of the old trees are still standing and they are very different from the apple trees that orchardists and home-gardeners grow these days.
Now, come along with me. We're going to walk through a paddock of cows and open a wire gate. Careful! Cows are curious things and they'll follow you if they can. All right? Here we are.
Do you see that old gnarled stump with a few dead branches on it? It would break if you tried to swing on it, so we'll just stand here and look. That old stump is all that's left of what my granny called the Ribstone. It was really a Ribstone Pippin, and it was the most important tree here in the orchard. It was a little crooked tree and the apples were always very small. They were round and green with red streaks on them and they were very sweet to taste. The only other time I've heard of Ribstones is in a very short poem by Hllaire Belloc.
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