There’s one. And another! And there’s a beauty, laden with fruit. Wild roadside apple trees, dozens of them, are flashing past the window as I drive through the rolling hills of South Gippsland, a landscape of lush, round, cow-studded hills. And every winding laneway and steep narrow road is fringed with apple trees.

You’ll find feral apples all across the greener bits of southern Australia – remnants of old farm orchards; wilding trees that have sprung up from half-eaten cores chucked out of car windows by bored children; pips spread by birds and animals. But the rich soil, high rainfall and cold winters of South Gippsland – the same conditions that make it such prime dairy country – is particularly conducive to the fruit.