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Bill Yaxley is well known in the art circles as a sculptor and painter. He grew up in Shepparton, Victoria and didn’t hang around long at school or in one of his first jobs as a bank clerk. Bill was always looking for something more creative and challenging to do with his life. Seeking excitement he joined a prospecting party with BHP at the age of eighteen and spent the next two years working in the rain forests of Cape York and in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. He particularly enjoyed the lush environs of the jungle and would one day return. At twenty he headed overseas to USA, Canada, France and England as did a lot of Australians in the 1960’s. Two years later he boarded a migrant ship back to Australia and did some prospecting work for BHP in the south west of Tasmania and Central Queensland.
Bill has worked on fishing boats and with his wife Helen, has also picked tobacco and apples in New Zealand. Despite his itinerant lifestyle he stopped long enough to make a great choice of wife in Helen (a school teacher and potter) and produce two strapping young lads, John and Jim. When Bill and Helen decided to stop working for other people and start a business of their own, they went from pineapple farming in Farnborough to citrus farming in Byfield, the latter of which proved to be their niche for quite some time. They purchased a run down citrus farm with half a mile of river frontage and a waterfall, which was beautiful and also functional. With no real farming experience behind them, Bill and Helen learned by trial and error and visited other helpful farmers in the area. Over a period of thirteen years they built up their mandarin farm into a thriving business that supported their family well.
A combination of factors led to their new beginning in a much cooler region of Australia. The hard physical work in the hot climate was taxing on the family with regular bouts of heatstroke and a green ant allergy for Bill who was not prepared to attack the ants with a poison that makes the cure worse than the complaint. As Bill’s family was originally from Tasmania and having enjoyed the visits there in the past, the family decided that the cool climate was right up their alley. Although John and Jim were old enough to strike out on their own by this stage, the close family stayed together and arrived in Tasmania in 1989.
Bill has always been an avid artist, painting from the age of 13. Wherever he has travelled he has used his spare time to produce paintings and sculptures from any materials that were available. He has an irrepressible urge to create and as he gets older that urge gets even stronger. Even though he was leading a busy farmer’s life, he always found time to produce art and has exhibited much of his work throughout Australia at various galleries. He has been commissioned to produce sculptures for various organisations and business people. Recently he has contributed sculptures to the Dismal Swamp in North West Tasmania and exhibited his work at the Carnegie Gallery in Hobart.
The Yaxley’s first farm was on a hill with a beautiful view, the second was in a rain forest with the river and waterfalls and now, the third is 140 acres at Copping which is also on a hill with pastoral, bush and sea views. They like places that ‘do things’ but what to do with this one? The climate was so different, as was the vegetation and the soil. Bill and Helen would like to have moved to Tasmania and live off their art alone but they had a family lifestyle to consider and John and Jim needed some gainful employment. By the late 80’s Tasmania’s fledgling wine industry was stretching its wings and early producers were having some success at producing high quality wines. Bill and his family knew nothing about growing grapes but with encouragement from winemaker Andrew Hood, they started the hard work of creating a vineyard. There was little research about varieties at the time and much was done by trial and error but growing mandarins had taught Bill that the most important starting point is to find the variety that best suits the climate and the soil. After that, farming and viticulture methods will take over to maximise the quality of the crop. Working with deciduous plants in a cool climate has been a revelation for Bill whose experience has been with evergreens in a hot climate. The vines need to be pruned to allow the sun to reach the fruit but without the right amount of leaves the sugars will not develop and neither will the complex fruit flavours that make great wine. With the Tasmanian climate that’s a dicey business but Bill and his family work very hard to get the right balance.
Yaxley Estate now has 5 acres of vineyard with 4 acres producing wine currently. They are constantly working on getting more sun to the fruit, either by raising the canopy and/or pulling out whole rows where they were originally planted too close together. Bill says it’s a bit like moving furniture in your house, you keep shuffling until you get it right and every year there’s something new to learn and a new method to try. As the vines age they produce fuller flavoured fruit and Bill believes that Tasmania is one of the few regions of the world where not just good, but spectacular vintages can be made. They consider each harvest to be the next ‘Grand Premiership’.
Please follow the link to the http://www.heisergallery.com.au/artists/yaxley/index.html in Brisbane, QLD for some photos of Bill's paintings.
