Perth’s WA Museum Boola Bardip and a great new Beechworth restaurant
Step inside Perth’s marvellous museum, and savour delicious flavours at a new Victorian winery restaurant.
Hot in the city
WA Museum Boola Bardip
There’s a resounding Indigenous flavour and feel that extends way beyond the name of WA Museum Boola Bardip at the Perth Cultural Centre, opened late last year. The translation is “many stories” and these narratives of country and clan reflect its site on Whadjuk Nyoongar land.
It’s an innovative museum for our times, a strong and inclusive assembly of heart and spirit that doesn’t resile from tales of hardship, exclusion and sorrow, plus the polarising realities of the state’s mining juggernaut. There are four levels, including a mezzanine, and the looping flow of spaces encourages visitors to wander at whatever pace they choose. There are eight permanent exhibitions and a rollcall of special showings.
I pause in wonder in the heritage Stan Perron WA Treasures hangar-like space, where Otto, a 120-year-old, 24m-long blue whale skeleton, hovers like an otherworldly dirigible, captivating juniors almost as completely as the fossils in the Wild Life gallery or the largest collection of meteorites in the southern hemisphere or the accessible technology of projected images of native animals such as dugongs and kangaroos. I linger amid the colour and diversity of the Ngalang Koort Boodja Wirn displays of Indigenous storytelling and cultural groups and consider how museums have developed and diversified.
The architecture alone is an exhibit of sorts, with its vast integration of five preserved historic buildings, including the Old Gaol, with a bold new perforated metal-clad and glazed extension that has a space-age cantilevered profile and sits high and proud, like a mighty lid. There’s a good cafe and gift shop plus free entry to permanent collections. A scene-setting Highlights Tour or Aboriginal Cultural Tour cost $10 a person; bookings recommended.
SUSAN KUROSAWA
Cool in the country
Vera restaurant at Glenbosch Wine Estate, near Beechworth, Victoria
You’ve got to love a winery where dogs are welcome to lounge in the sun and make friends with the resident border collie while diners sip fruity spritzers and glasses of estate rose with just the barest blush of pink. That’s the relaxed vibe at Glenbosch Wine Estate, where business partners Tim Witherow and Sally Wright (of Cyril restaurant at Whorouly Hotel) have teamed up to create Vera, with renowned chef Doug Elder (formerly at Brown Brothers in Milawa) in charge of the kitchen.
Locally sourced vegetables are the heroes of the menu, a seven-course savoury spread designed to share. On the day of my visit, dishes include juicy truss tomatoes with whipped feta and a crunchy hazelnut pangrattato, heavenly roasted potatoes with smoked trout cream, and prawn and green pea fritters. Meat gets a look-in with fine slivers of lamb, a veal shank braise and roasted chicken. Bread is available on request but Elder wants diners to save room for far more interesting fare.
The pace is relaxed, with plates served two or three at a time and plenty of space in between to sit back and enjoy mountain views over the vines or contemplate the wine list, featuring mostly Victorian drops.
Inside, the dining space is all dark walls and earthy tones but with loads of light pouring in from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Best of all, there’s an enormous slow-combustion burner that should make this a popular lunch spot in the depths of winter. Oh, and the taps in the loos are very cute, like miniature old-fashioned water pumps.
Open for lunch Friday to Monday, $65 a person, with optional dessert $15.
PENNY HUNTER