IT HAD BEEN raining the first time I visited far northwest Tasmania. Which isn’t unusual. Rain, that often-fickle decider of rural fate, falls regularly and in volume on this little corner of the world. It can be a challenge for all farmers, too much rain, especially the free-range pig farmers who, like me, try to paddock-rear their livestock from birth to the cutting shop.

But this rain is a gift. It’s clean rain. It falls through what has been recorded to be the cleanest air in the world. This rain falls mostly on loam, a fertile, free-draining type of soil that simply grows stuff better. And it falls even in dry times that bring drought elsewhere in the state and country.