One of Animus Distillery’s all time favourite cocktails… a simple recipe to make at home, Macedon Dry Martini.
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Drumbeats sound out a steady rhythm in the stillness of the midwinter morning, muffled by thick fog hanging like a blanket in the air. In all directions lie green fields, glistening with droplets of freezing condensation.
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We certainly are living through interesting times. As I’m sitting inside, feeling lucky to spend my self-isolation in Victoria’s most beautiful region, I’m reminded of my favourite saying. As the story goes, many years ago, a Persian king asked a group of sages and wise men to create a phrase which would be applicable to all imaginable situations. In short, after many failed attempts, they finally succeeded in producing a phrase which satisfied the king: “This too, shall pass”.
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If you’re after a good example of someone being ahead of the curve, Scott Wilson-Browne from Ballarat’s Red Duck Beer is an excellent candidate.
Given the quality and variety of his beer – everything from popular Pale and Amber Ale styles through to more out -there brews like a barrel-aged, French farmhouse-style saison called Walking With My Wild Best Friend – it’s hard to fathom that Scott is basically self-taught.
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Daylesford’s Black Gallery, might look like a toast to Cubism from the outside but on the inside, the paintings of Cristina Doyle marvel in the emotional marriage of colour and emotion. “I love the freedom of Abstract painters,” says Cristina. “I love that it didn’t have to relate to the real world. Their paintings have movement, they have energy.”
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Hepburn Springs' only historic bathhouse, has been providing traditional social bathing since 1895. “It makes us a pivotal part of this community,” explains Robbie, our guide to the Bathhouse. “We have our Spring Creek running next to the facility. And in Summer, this means it’s slightly greener. We get lovely wildlife; kookaburras raising their young next to our creekside deck.”
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“Sam and I are both very passionate Italian food lovers,” says Thornycroft. “It was a bit of a romantic idea we had to open our own trattoria.”
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A delicious recipe thanks to the Farmers Arms Daylesford kitchen!
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One of Animus Distillery’s all time favourite cocktails… say hello to your new fave too, Sazerac.
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Spud farming can be traced as far back as the Inca in Peru, who were the first to cultivate potatoes more than 8,000 years ago. In Trentham, since the early 1900s, a fertile strip of red volcanic soil has made potato farming a mainstay of the town's economy. But potatoes are more than just a product, after rice and wheat, they're the third most important food crop in the world and one of the finest sources of starch, vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber.
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Nestled among the lush fauna of the Macedon Ranges, Camp David Farm offers a bucolic escape, disguised as a slice of the country, on a picturesque garden estate.
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Joseph Maiden was a botanist, curator and collector, most famous for his work with the eucalyptus and the acacia. Visitors to his museum were presented with 'narratives of progress' that traversed Australian botany, geology and zoology. Maiden would present a raw product and demonstrate how it could be made useful, the exhibits focused on ideas of progressive transformation.
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Fittingly for a bar decked out in so much Old World finery it’s like stepping into a portal to an earlier time, Creswick’s newest bar occupies its oldest building. Odessa is the latest iteration of Leaver’s Hotel, the 1852 construction that was the only thing on Alber Street left standing when fire ripped through more than a century ago.
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As the sweltering summer recedes, March approaches with the complex prospects of autumn in tow. The days grow colder and shorter, typically inducing melancholy in many as the winter approaches, though this may prove itself a welcome reprieve at first, given the extreme weather of the past few months. The beautiful colours of spring and summer wither and die, cascading down in waves of brilliant oranges and yellows. Cosy autumn foods and winter fashion makes a return, though at the cost of daylight and warm evenings. It’s a contradictory time of year, and 2020 will be no exception, with at least two additional twists.
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As we peer into Manteau Noir in Daylesford, a bunny dressed in shreds stares back at us, puzzling our imagination, the sculpture looks as though it has been dug-up from a grave. It’s gothic, mysterious and beautiful.
“Hip Hip Decay!” is the anthem of Ballarat artist Suzanne McRae, whose doll-like sculptures discover beauty in the grotesque collage of animals, Victorian fashion and fairy tales.
“We lived in Invermay, before it was fancy. Dad built an A-frame house. And so we had five acres of bush and paddocks and I would just go off by myself and play in the bush,” says Suzanne. “It was a great time.”
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In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo writes “A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” The lyrical power of Paul Bangay’s gardens allow the wanderer to lose themselves in dreams sculpted from the divine.
Paul Bangay is working from a private studio in his country residence Stonefields, “My mother was a great gardener. She was very involved in design back then, very much a native focus. She used to work with Ellis Stone, the famous landscape designer. It was a garden that evolved all the time, that’s what I loved about it,” explains Paul, nostalgically. “I grew up in the outer Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, we had ten acres so I had my own collection of ferns and a big vegie garden.”
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Let’s raise a glass to the power of community. Thanks to Harriet and Henry Churchill of Zig Zag winery, it’s now possible to do that in a delightfully more literal sense than usual. Two years after the English ex-pats arrived in the Macedon Ranges area and became the latest “stewards”, as they describe it, of their beautiful three-hectare vineyard outside Malmsbury, they have just released their second label. Known as Kind Folk, it’s a celebration of the friends and volunteers who have emerged from the local community to help them realise their dream.
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ChillOut Festival is more than a fabulous celebration of expression, dance and drink - it has become the the bedrock of Daylesford’s LGBTIQ+ community. ChillOut is recognised as a culturally important LGBTIQ+ pride event, supporting and representing queer pride for all regional people.
Early organisers wanted to emphasise the country feel of Daylesford. The event was also an important way of profile-raising for the gay and lesbian community in Daylesford as well as the wider Hepburn Shire region. From humble beginnings at a picnic in the mid 90s, ChillOut has flowered into Australia’s largest queer country pride festival.
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