Hunter gatherer

That was a mighty fine steak I enjoyed close to the mountain in Tasmania named after my grandfather

It was the largest piece of steak I’d ever seen. Back in 2000, like most people, I was still shielded from such things by supermarkets. But this was Tasmania, at a house on the edge of the small town of Evandale. Brandishing it was Ian Campbell, who lived at this farm and stud with his wife Jane. As old family friends, they were proffering memorable hospitality.

There had been lots of conversation about the meat. Indeed, it seemed a key staging post on our Tasmania itinerary. The trip was an essential deviation from a wedding party outside Melbourne and it was something of a pilgrimage.

My mother, Susanna, grew up in 1950s Tasmania, in the capital, Hobart. Her father was the governor, so she and her three sisters lived a semi-regal existence at Government House. Sir Ronald Cross, with the savage title of minister of economic warfare at the start of the Second World

War and then minister of shipping during Churchill’s wartime coalition government, was posted to Tasmania in 1951.

Impossibly handsome and upright, together with his wife and teenage daughters in flowing summer dresses, he must have presented quite an exotic sight that August. Indeed I have seen the cine footage and they did.

So, having made it to Melbourne I felt one final push a little further south was essential. From my usual perch, Tasmania seems to be on the edge of the world. Fall off the bottom and you land with a cold bump on Antarctica. One feels that the moon is closer, yet it felt oddly familiar. Yes it’s an island of rugged mountains, thick bushland and dense rainforest, but it’s also a place of salmon, oysters and cheese. In fact, I once commissioned a story on Australian cheese (for the Waitrose magazine I used to edit) by the great Sir Les Patterson, via his agent Barry Humphries. It was one of the finest pieces I was never able to print. Sir Les, who once sat on the Australian Cheese Board, described Tasmania as “that bushy, triangular zone down under where the cheese is second to none”.

My trip was in November – Aussie summertime – but the air was comfortably cool. As he stood in his kitchen,

Campbell held aloft a vast piece of Devon beef, cut proudly from a British breed. Taking me on a drive earlier, he had looked around and said: “I have a great affinity with the Scottish Borders.” And I understood what he meant.

I have a direct and personal link with the land, at least a little bit of it. Some 80 miles north-west of Hobart you will find Mount Ronald Cross. It is 1,127m high at its peak and, while I wouldn’t attempt delving through the thick bush, leaping over creeks, and hauling myself up tarns and over ridges to scale it, its existence is a matter of pride. I mean, does your grandpa have a mountain named after him?

All of this and the bonhomie of the Campbells made us feel very at home. And the feeling was coupled with the quirkiness of remote island life.

“Shall I phone you when our flight lands?” I had asked Ian. “Don’t worry,” he replied. “I’ll know when you’ve arrived.” Indeed, their house was practically at the end of the runway, which was fine as the flights were infrequent. But when they came over, you knew about it. A few mornings later, I awoke thinking a plane was about to land on my head.

Forty-eight hours later, I visited Hobart and had a sneaky view of the garden of Government House, where I imagined my mother’s teenage years. A balance of wild opportunity and stiff formality, she and her sisters would curtsy to their father at breakfast.

Many years later, life was rather more relaxed at Evandale. Ian stuffed the hunk of meat under an old but seemingly effective electric grill. I studied this big, handsome guy imagining him gallivanting about Chelsea in the 1960s; a long way from the disapproving gaze of Sir Ronald.

Ian died a few years ago and left his prize English Leicester sheep to his six-year-old grandson George, who had shown a glimmer of interest in them. Ian had a great sense of humour and, regardless of his cooking appliances, he cooked one hell of a good piece of beef.

I imagined my mother’s teenage years in Hobart: a balance of wild opportunity and stiff formality