Someone wants to buy our vineyard.

Someone wants to buy our vineyard! They want to buy it for its precious irrigation licence and rip out all the vines. My stomach churns when I think of our beautiful vines being tossed into a bon fire - gone forever in an evening's entertainment.

Well, technically, they're not our vines. They are owned by my husband Jamie's parents, but the vineyard has been Jamie's baby since he established it over fifteen years ago. Jamie meticulously measured out every row and every vine, co-ordinated the planting of every one of the 70,000 vines, and ultimately created a first class vineyard producing premium fruit and award winning wines. I helped too, of course. Mainly in the marketing and drinking departments.

But now someone wants to buy it while the vineyard market is at an all time low and Jamie and I are desperately trying to find a way to keep it. It is strange to have your vision of the future - of growing old with the vines, of the children growing up with the industry - suddenly yanked out from under you. What else would we do?

The last eight years have been extremely difficult for anyone on the land in Australia. We are now suffering through our ninth year of drought, and the grape industry collapsed thanks to a major glut a few years ago. With no one to sell fruit to, it is hard to keep the business going. Jamie's parents have retired and, understandably, want financial security. Due to drought, grape glut, frost hits and the general state of the global economy, the vineyard has not been a source of financial security for a number of years, in fact, it has been a drain.

But things will improve - there's nothing surer. Everything is cyclical - it's just a matter of whether or not we can hang on until the upswing - and the fat lady ain't singing yet!