A Fridgy Story from Dwellingup, Western Australia
We drove out to Redgum Winery not knowing it would become one of our favourite shoots yet.
Maree and Ben own Redgum Wine Estate, and it was Maree who had invited us out. A working vineyard just beyond the beautiful township of Dwellingup, rolling hills, native bush, a year-round spring that anchors the property with a quiet kind of permanence. The kind of place that feels completely itself, and that comes through in every frame.
We had the latest additions to the Fridgy lineup with us — the DuoChill, MegaMate, our 5.5L flagship, the Mini Chill, and the new LockLid tumblers — and every intention of making the most of the setting.
What we didn't have on the brief was Maree's father.
Cliff and his wife Louise live on the property together, in their own cottage set on a hill above the vines, with sweeping views that stretch as far as the eye wants to go. It is exactly the kind of home you would build if you had spent a lifetime earning the right to it.
Cliff made the day what it was.
We arrived during the last pick of the season. The 2026 vintage was going into full production, and the energy on the property carried that particular quiet intensity that comes with harvest. Everyone knowing what needed doing. Everything moving with purpose.
We set up. We started shooting. And then we noticed a man who didn't stop moving.
Meeting Cliff
He was out working the netting, feeding it by hand onto a pulley system he had invented and built himself. Steady, focused, completely in his element.
We would later learn he was over 80 years old.
The pulley was his own design from the ground up. No blueprint. No outside help. Just a problem he had identified, a solution he had engineered, and a system that now simply worked. Watching him feed that netting with the ease of someone who has spent a lifetime solving things with his hands, it was impossible not to stop and stare.
That is the moment Fridgy fell in love with Cliff.
Because invention is at the heart of everything we do. And here was a man who had never stopped.
We introduced ourselves. Showed him the MegaMate, all 5.5 litres of it, and watched his face light up. The Mini Chill and the new LockLid tumblers and Cruise bottles got the same reaction. When we asked if he would be part of the shoot, he didn't hesitate. He was in, willingly and warmly, and that ease in front of the camera, that complete absence of performance, made every single frame.
What followed was one of those rare days on set where everything you capture feels real, because it is.
The more time we spent on the property, the more we began to understand that much of what makes Redgum work exists because of him.
What Cliff Built at Redgum Winery, Dwellingup
The more time we spent on the property, the more we began to understand that much of what makes Redgum work exists because of him.
The dam was redesigned by Cliff. The irrigation and septic systems. Most of the woodwork inside the cellar door. The net pulley system we watched him working, custom built, fabricated by his own hands.
Out by the water sits what appears to be a small decorative cottage. It looks intentional, almost ornamental, something that simply belongs in the landscape. It is a pump cover. Cliff took a sea container and transformed it, adding artificial windows styled to resemble a miniature building. Functional infrastructure, resolved with creativity and care.
Once you know what to look for at Redgum Winery Dwellingup, you start seeing his work everywhere.
We asked Maree about him. And that is when the real story began.
Born in Lincolnshire
Cliff grew up in Lincolnshire, UK, one of seven children. He lost his mother when he was just seven years old, one of the youngest in the family.
At sixteen, he was cycling across Europe alone. At eighteen, he converted a lifeboat into a sailboat and navigated the Mediterranean and French canals with a friend. He trained as a plumber, following his father and two brothers, earned his City and Guilds, and left England behind.
He ended up in Sydney. While he was there, he worked on the flashings of the Sydney Opera House.
That sounds like an exaggeration. It is not.
The Woman Who Pulled Her Curlers Out
Cliff was living in a block of flats in Kings Cross when he met Louise.
Maree says her mother always knew when her dad was nearby. He never walked up the stairs. He ran.
One evening, Louise was getting ready to go out on a date with someone else. Cliff knocked on her door and told her he would be back in half an hour to take her out. She told him she already had plans. He said he would be back anyway.
She thought, to hell with it. Pulled out her curlers. Called the other man and cancelled.
Half an hour later, Cliff was at the door.
A week later, he proposed. A month later, they were married in a registry office with two witnesses pulled in from the street.
That was over 57 years ago.They are still together.
"If I build a boat, will you sail around the world with me?"
If I Build a Boat
One day, sitting together looking out to sea, Cliff asked Louise a simple question.
If I build a boat, will you sail around the world with me?
Louise said yes. Of course.
She did not quite understand at the time that he meant it literally.
They moved to South Africa, where Louise was from, and built a plumbing business together. They worked hard, the way they always did, and it succeeded, the way things always seemed to when they put their hands to something. Then Cliff announced it was time to start building the boat.
He built it from scratch. Every weekend, for four years. He named it after Louise.
When it was finished, they sold the business, took Maree and her sister out of school, and moved the whole family on board. Louise had never sailed before. It was, as Maree puts it, a huge adjustment.
They sailed the world for ten years.
California, Then Onward
Four of those years were spent living in California, still on the boat, while Cliff and Louise built another plumbing business from scratch. Maree and her sister went to school there. The business took off, as expected.
They left California, kept sailing, and eventually sold the boat in Hawaii.
They returned to Lincolnshire and set up a waterlily farm, which ran successfully for 14 years. Then came Western Australia, following Maree to Perth. A house in Mandurah. A caravan built from scratch because he got a bit bored. A tugboat bought and converted into a live-aboard home. Seven years in Mackay near Maree's sister.
And then, Redgum.
Maree is clear about it: we would not be where we are on the winery today without him. No matter what, he can fix it or build it.
What He's Built Here
Maree is clear about it:we would not be where we are on the winery today without him. No matter what, he can fix it or build it.
He is the layer beneath the experience. The systems everything else depends on. The part that holds, functions, and endures.
He also recites poetry. Loves wood turning and fishing. And more than anything, loves Louise.
Maree describes him as an amazing father, someone who made his children believe there was nothing they couldn't do if they really wanted to. The love was tough, but it was always present. They always knew he was there.
Dynamic in every sense of the word. Intelligent, full of life, a workaholic with a great sense of humour.
A legend, by any measure.
Fridgy at Redgum Winery, Dwellingup
Fridgy was built on the belief that great products come from genuine invention. From identifying a problem, solving it properly, and making something that holds up in the real world.
Cliff has lived that philosophy for over eight decades.
Watching him work the netting onto that pulley he built with his own hands, seeing him light up over the MegaMate, moving easily through the shoot with the Cruise bottles, Alldayer and the Mini Chill, it was exactly the kind of day that reminds us why we make what we make. Doing it all at the last pick of the 2026 vintage, with the winery in full swing around us, made it feel like something worth holding onto.
Redgum is care, patience, and craftsmanship. Cliff is ingenuity, durability, and a refusal to do anything halfway. The alignment felt natural because it was.
If you find yourself visiting Redgum near Dwellingup, sitting by the fire in the cellar door, looking out across the vineyard and the water beyond, you are looking at the result of a lifetime of work.
Some of it visible. Most of it not.
All of it built with intent.
And that is exactly what the DuoChill stands for.
Most people only ever see the glamorous side of wine.
Most people only ever see the glamorous side of wine. The cellar door, the long table, the last light falling across a full glass. What they don't see is this — the hard graft, the unglamorous work, the weathered hands and the improvised solutions that make a vintage possible. The DuoChill was never designed for the polished side of the story. It was made for the people who live the real one. A badge of the ruggedness that wine making actually demands, worn proudly by those who know what it takes.
Cliff knows what it takes.
He always has.
Visit Redgum Winery, Dwellingup just outside Dwellingup, Western Australia.
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