Landscapes of the Subconscious

This has been one of my longest stretches away from Vancouver, my home and work base. The first five weeks have been spent in Australia, mostly around the Melbourne area.

We all travel with different intentions. I’m drawn to culture, local produce, and the human and geographic history of a place. Victoria meets that beautifully. And summer here in January and February? A definite bonus.

Some days, we combine landscape wandering with wine tasting. They make perfect day trips.

Passing Clouds

Landscape in Victoria

Driving along C317, the wide yellow fields and expansive sky reminded me of Saskatchewan — the “Land of Living Skies.” Then the tall trees and gentle rolling hills began to feel almost Tuscan. A surprisingly beautiful blend of landscapes here in western Victoria.

Passing along the landscapes, my own perception struck me how the mind works: we don’t just see what’s in front of us — we filter it through personal memory. The subconscious quietly searches for familiarity, linking new experiences to old ones so we can make sense of them. Funny how a stretch of road can echo places half a world apart simply because our inner landscape recognizes something it has known before.

We ended up at a small winery, Passing Clouds. Bern Barry welcomed us before we even reached the door — relaxed, unpretentious tasting, beautiful wines, and no attempt to lecture us into appreciating them. As the last two customers of the day, we had the luxury of an unhurried conversation. Bern doesn’t only pour wine — he paints too. Listening to him speak about both felt like watching someone fully inhabit his craft without needing to prove it.

Passing Clouds Wine Tasting

It made me think about how often we overcomplicate things. Wine, for me, is simple: there are the ones I like and the ones I don’t. Every wine I tasted landed firmly in the first category. No analysis required. Just a quiet internal “yes.” And that, too, is a lesson from the subconscious — it often knows before the mind begins its commentary.

The winery is called Passing Clouds, and the name lingered with me. Maybe we ourselves are just passing clouds to the winery — brief visitors in a long story that began decades ago. Yet even passing moments leave a trace. We came home with one bottle — a classic Australian Shiraz–Cabernet blend they’ve been producing since the 1980s. I’m looking forward to opening it at the right moment, knowing that when we do, it will carry not just flavour, but memory.

Wishing Bern great success with his Distraction by Abstraction exhibition in March.

Hanging Rock

A visit to Hanging Rock — a striking volcanic formation rising out of open farmland — felt less like sightseeing and more like entering a psychological landscape.

Like the girls in the Australian movie Picnic at Hanging Rock, I wandered without urgency. Every narrow passage and sudden opening shifted my internal state. The body responded first: alert, curious, slightly unsettled. The nervous system doesn’t need a storyline to activate — the environment alone can do that.

Hanging Rock, a place that I didn’t want to leave

The rock faces seemed almost human. The silence carried weight. Beauty and unease coexisted without cancelling each other out.

Joan Lindsay’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock has wrapped the place in mystery for decades, and whether the story is “true” is almost irrelevant. What fascinates me is this: give the mind ambiguity, and it will generate meaning. Give it absence, and it will create narrative. We are meaning-making creatures. That is both our gift and our trap.

As a hypnotherapist, I’m always aware of how suggestion works — not just in a session, but in life. A landscape can prime emotion. A story can deepen it. A shared myth can make a rock feel haunted.

And yet beneath interpretation, there was something simpler: sensation. Stone under hand. Wind on skin. Height, depth, space. When I stopped analyzing and simply experienced, the intensity softened into presence.

On the way back, a stop at Hanging Rock Winery felt grounding. Under the sweeping canopy of a River Red Gum, at a barrel table surrounded by roses and vines, we shared wine and a cheese board with the Rock Hill in the distance. The sun was lowering with its golden glow, the breeze became steady, and our nervous system felt settled.

Beautiful Hanging Rock Winery

Places can activate us. Stories can amplify that activation. But awareness brings us back.

Passing or hanging — mystery or memory — as I continue on my journey, I am staying present.

Rose bushes, vineyards, and the Hanging Rock hill in the distance