THIS is the magnificent Heide II, once owned by art patrons and writer / artist / art lovers and collectors John and Sunday Reed.

I loved standing in both of Sunday Reed’s Heide I and Heide II kitchen gardens, in the spot where the Heart Garden was and walking to the property’s existing boundary to find Rosa mutabilis, which is the subject of the painting by Sidney Nolan and exhibited in the retrospective on at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia while I was in Melbourne. I had actually seen the exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where as it happens, Archibald Prize winner Del Kathryn Barton’s work is showing. Barton’s works was part of the Romance Was Born Garden of Eden exhibition of textiles and design showing at the National Design Centre while I was in Melbourne. How’s that for an artistic six degrees of separation?