As spring segues into summer in England, lots of our readers will be heading there. Temperatures climb over a land that looks greener than ever after a rather wet few months and the place seems increasingly merry. The festival season is underway, with revelry stoking cities, towns and villages — as well as in hectares of farmers’ fields in between.

Live music fuels many events, and Glastonbury is the biggest of all, at the end of June. But other festivals embrace specialist themes, from food and flowers to art and wildlife. Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion.

Among the most prevalent are steam rallies, staged across the country by enthusiasts and collectors. I’m at one today, Woolpit Steam, which unfurls by the rolling barley fields of Suffolk, between Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich, north-east of London. I’ve come along with John, my dad, my uncle Ray and their friend Stuart — all Suffolk lads with a keen interest in bygone machines.

Whether you’re into the fine mechanical details or the aesthetics, or both, a raft of exhibits vie for your attention, some shaded beneath oak and pine trees, others in the glare of the sun, revolving, hissing and spluttering in front of the caravans of their owners who’ve pitched up for the weekend. There’s everything from interwar tractors built in Le Mans, Chicago, Milwaukee and Moline to Suffolk-built stationary engines that would have been used to cut wood, power water pumps or .