The usual scrubby resilience of the West Coast vegetation is slipping into large tracts of desert-like sand, animal feed is being bought at great cost to the farmers, the dams are empty and broken and the clouds pulled up out of the Atlantic ocean are not likely to fulfil their promise of rain for a good few months to come. In spite of these dire comments it remains a mystical and beautiful landscape that gnaws at your soul and pulls you into its determination to survive, and more than that, to flourish.