Hook, Line & Sinker
The truth is, we were
lucky not to lose PL more than 20 years ago when a surgical slip during a bowel
cancer operation cost him a kidney. The complications that followed almost
knocked him over. It gave him a sniff of his mortality. If he hadn’t snapped the
hobbles on June 28th, PL would have celebrated his 83rd
birthday on August 18th, 2013.
There are a lot of family,
friends and colleagues around the world who are and will continue to be sad for
a very long time because of his death - none more so than wife Margaret and
their immediate and wonderful family.
I count myself fortunate
to be a member of the wider PL ‘family’. This story isn’t about PL the
so-called wine making ‘legend’, a term Margaret dislikes with a passion – along
with icon and numerous other overblown descriptions. Outstanding tributes and
recognition of his significant and life long contribution to the Australian
wine industry and his passion for the Barossa are to be found elsewhere.
Wine, Barossa Music
Festivals and Gourmet Weekends, the Birdsville Track mailman Tom Kruse doco and
filming Tasting Australia for ABC TV, wonderful long lunches in the Lehmann
kitchen and the occasional sleepover may have been how and why my wife Jane and
I met Peter and Margaret, but it was around other shared interests that our
friendship developed.
PL really enjoyed growing
things as well grapes. Who knew mangoes and avocados thrived at Tanunda! He
would fish just about anywhere and he loved a punt on useless four legged grass
burners. He followed a couple of trainers, with the Hayes family at the top of
the list.
Our Saturday afternoons together
were usually in the kitchen with Sky Racing on the screen and the TAB page from
the local rag on the table, while Jane and Margaret discussed the weighty issues
of the world.
PL also owned a number of
trotters that occasionally won at better than 15/1. Of course he wouldn’t tell
you it was going around until 20 minutes after the race – because he didn’t
think it was a chance.
In recent years, as his
remaining kidney steadily lost function and needed to be hooked up to a
dialysis machine in Adelaide three days a week, he kept his punting cash in his
pocket. He knew what we part-time punters finally work out – it’s a mug’s game
and he loved it.
PL also enjoyed wetting a
line. From the early 90s, we’d work on a plan to go somewhere a bit different
every year to catch a fish.
Garfish
– on a moonless night with Department of Ag agronomist Bob Haggerstrom in his
four metre tinny, catching net and underwater light in hand at American River
on Kangaroo Island. There could only be two at a time onboard. This meant
Margaret and I would be on the jetty with a warming glass or two of some
Lehmann deliciousness. We’d swap over every 20 minutes. We quickly learnt that you’ve
got to get the small catching net on the end of the hand held pole in front of
a garfish. They are impossible to scoop up from behind. They’re too fast!
Snapper – off
the bottom of Yorke Peninsula with Dave Burge from Coober Pedy and his motley
crew in vessels of questionable seaworthiness. From time to time we slept in
swags. When PL rolled out of bed on day two of the snapper expedition, after a
particularly rough night, he swore that his swag days were over – indeed he
never swagged it again.
King George Whiting - at Coffin Bay, off Farm Beach and around the Sir
Joseph Banks Group of Islands off Tumby Bay on Eastern Eyre Peninsula with Ken
Scott. I now have in my boat a GPS mark off Farm Beach named Lehmann. PL
cleaned up with a bag of 40 + cm KG whiting. It’s the spot where he showed me
how to skin a leather jacket (a much underrated fish in his view) with the back
of a hacksaw blade. He liked the flavor of the fish and skin, lightly fried in
butter with a squeeze of lemon and a bit of cracked pepper.
Mulloway & Coorong Mullet – in the Coorong (caught with square hooks – read
net) after a failed attempt to land a Coorong mullet with a line. Lakes and
Coorong fishers Gary Hera-Singh and Henry Jones were wonderful hosts and
enjoyed the PLW Port and being walloped by Margaret at crib.
There are numerous
trophies and remarkable photographs in the wondrous Lehmann home in the Barossa.
They recognize the PL and Margaret story and his outstanding wine making
successes and contribution to the industry nationally and internationally.
Among a pile of lists,
photos and stuff stuck with magnets to the fridge in the kitchen is a pic that
brings a smile to my face every time I see it. It was taken in 1995 of a couple
of daggy blokes with a couple of mulloway. The location is Gary Hera-Singh’s fishing
shack on the Coorong. Peter in a crappy jumper remarkably without a fag and me
in a bucket hat - with a fag. Margaret reckons I look like Andy Capp and loves
the shot. The above shot is of the four of us in the Lehmann kitchen a month or
so before he died.
Ian Doyle
August 2013
