Vanstone The Best In Show

Sun Herald

Sunday April 8, 2007

William Petley

AT Wednesday's Royal Agricultural Society of NSW Best of the Land dinner at the Opera House, the Prime Minister John Howard awarded the 2007 President's Medal to Eileen Hardy Chardonnay V 2004. (At this news Pat Anderson, wife of the chairman of the RAS Cheese and Dairy produce committee, Gerry, winced.) Amanda Vanstone, who was for many the highlight of the night (she had Ann Lewis and Ian Kortlang laughing), when prompted by broadcaster Simon Marnie to eat the fat-pillowed braised Coorong Angus beef brisket, responded with a succinct "No". Vanstone also interviewed the medal's finalists, now presumably bearers of bruises, the senator tending toward the tactile for emphasis. She really warrants her own show. Best behaviour: Ken and Maureen Cowley, Alasdair and Prue MacLeod, Mel Ashton, Arthur Bragg and, of course, RAS president Rob Vickery.

Designer dinners

ON the evening of May 24, for the fourth year, the Chandon Supper Club will assist Camp Quality. From hundreds of private-at-a-price dinners in all manner of restaurants, the guests, having deeply indulged in diversity of wine, will be transported by soberly uniformed drivers to a great crush of a party at an undisclosed location. All in the desire and hope of bringing some respite to kids - and their families - with cancer. From April 16 at www.campquality.org.au there's an auction of Chandon vintage brut jeroboams (five litres - enough to squirt the complete team), personifying Camp Quality and dressed by Camilla and Marc, Dinosaur Designs, Easton Pearson, Morrissey and, as you can see (below), Tea Rose.

Country living remembered

AT month's end the new edition of Meg Stewart's Autobiography Of My Mother will be feted with a special affair at Bookham, in the Yass district, where for more than 150 years her family were shopkeepers. The countryside, with place names like Burrinjuck, Wee Jasper and Bogolong, was dear to her mother, painter Margaret Coen's heart. (One of the things Coen especially liked were the pink-black mushrooms that came round at Easter.) Frank Moorhouse, a devil of a fellow presently popping up in Vogue Australia's party pages attending a dinner with a Miss Havisham theme, officiates at the April 28 launch. Can Moorhouse make mischief in Bookham?

Keeping it in the family

THRASHING about at next Sunday's polo Test match at the Windsor Polo Club, Richmond, will be Robert Ballard and Will Gilmore, part of the Australian team playing against Chile. (They, and their slicked-back manes, arrive next week.) Ballard, a four-goaler from Millamolong, played his first international tournament as a junior at age 12 and, like his father Greg before him, has represented the country; fortunately for everyone he started riding from the age of two. Gilmore, who sensibly sprang from Darling Downs, Queensland, and a family well respected in Australian polo - Uncle Stuart is of the Ellerston Club - participated in February's World Cup play-offs in New Zealand. So that's them.

Cross to bear on its way

A LITTLE previous but appropriate: the World Youth Day cross arrives in Sydney from St Peter's Basilica in Rome on Sunday July 1; a harbinger of the visit of the Holy Father, Il Papa, Benedict XVI, nee Ratzinger - a man who sometimes wears slippers embroidered with a cross of rubies - for the celebration of World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney. As suggested at the website www.wyd2008.org, mark the date in your diary now and make a start on breaking in your sandals. Some New Zealanders pass over the cross, which then tours every diocese, in every state and you have, from today, exactly 83 days to practice bearing it.

Stud sale draws big names

SERIOUS punters will line up for the three-day William Inglis & Son Easter Yearling sale commencing on April 10 at their Newmarket Stables, Randwick. VVVIPs: Hong Kong Jockey Club racing director Winifred Engelbrecht-Bresges; owner of one of France's most successful studs, Marc de Chambure; New Zealand's Sir Michael Fay (banker and America's Cup challenger); South Africa's Mauritzfontein Stud's Bridget Oppenheimer, of the diamond-mining and goldmining Oppenheimers; Lord (Sam)Vestey from Stowell Park, UK; and Henrietta Tavistock, the dowager duchess of Bedford, formerly Henrietta Tiarks, London Deb of the Year 1957 and, through the family's Bloomsbury Studs, breeder of winners of the English Derby and Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Make that very serious punters.

NOW YOU KNOW

AFTER 13 years of hair, hair and more hair (imagine the drains!), Double Bay's Smyth Fitzgerald salon has closed its doors. Jennifer Smyth - last seen socially as trim as a pin beside partner Sean Howard at the Sydney Cancer Centre Foundation's $4 million fund-raiser - has merged operations with Andrea Connolly in the soon-to-be open complex on the site of the old Double Bay Westpac. If nothing else, this reflects the diversity of Sydney life.

ON THE RISE

SYDNEY'S first English-language magazine produced by the Tibetan community will be presented to the Dalai Lama when he floats by in June. While there will be only a small print run of 1000 copies, the magazine hopes to build for future issues. It is dying to sell the full-colour, back-page advert for $1000. Since no Chinese restaurants seem interested, why not contact Leona Kieran at gyangbod@yahoo.com, plonk down the loot and guarantee yourself enormous karma.

© 2007 Sun Herald

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