Postcard from Hobart

There has so far been only one thing wrong with the Eighth International Cool Climate Symposium here in Tasmania: the weather. As I write on Thursday evening just before the gala dinner to be cooked by famous Sydney chef Tetsuya Wakuda 'and local top chefs' (don't eat out in Hobart tnight), I am feeling warm enough for the first time since we arrived in low cloud and a whipping damp wind last Monday.

Everyone tells us how we have just missed a heatwave, and how each year Hobart battles it out with Adelaide to be Australia's driest capital city. The...