Why South Gippsland is the next big thing
Stay at a converted bank, visit craft distillers and eat at a cafe with no menu at one of the region’s very cool towns.
The Strzelecki Ranges may be Victoria’s least-taxing row of hills, but you’ll come unstuck if the soundtrack’s not right.
We begin our ascent off the Princes Highway east of Melbourne to Bizet’s Carmen, but its Latin tempo sends us into the corners with too much gusto. Strauss is no better; it rolls like the green hills surrounding us.
We get there with Gorecki’s Third Symphony, its slow, contemplative buildup the ideal pacemaker for a drive through ranges named for a countryman of the composer two centuries earlier.
Pawel Strzelecki, the Polish explorer who gave the Australian atlas its greatest tongue-twister when naming our highest mountain, spent weeks in 1840 struggling through this rainforest-covered country.
Now, once synched with the music, we do it with ease on the Strzelecki Highway and Grand Ridge Road, glorious tourist routes through these South Gippsland ranges.
Few significant stands of rainforest remain, the country mostly given over to feeding us. Dairy cattle dot the hillsides, and we’re alert for farmgates with the hero crop in these parts, potatoes.
Approaching tiny Thorpdale, it’s a quick detour to probably Victoria’s shortest waterfall, Narracan, while another sign points down a lane: “The site of the World’s Tallest Tree.” Which it was, at 114.3m, although it was a record awarded posthumously because, to measure it, in 1884 the surveyor chopped this mighty mountain ash down.
The highway and Grand Ridge Road meet near Mirboo North, an eclectic community of 1500 sitting astride the ridge, and with a recent addition to Gippsland’s array of desirable digs, Bank on Ridgway.
The Colonial Bank of Australasia operated here for 70 years, and for a while it was an antiques shop. It had been shut for 12 years when local couple Denise Hankinson and Mark Holden couldn’t bear to see it deteriorate further and made an offer in early 2023. Holden did the renovation himself, and by year’s end Bank on Ridgway was reborn.
Although having no previous hospitality experience, the couple has triumphed.
The moment you step through the door of this private retreat for two, there’s an air of calm and refinement. A cinnamon oil infusion lingers in the former banking chamber, now a large lounge with dining nook.
Holden couldn’t preserve the original wooden floors but the pressed metal ceiling remains and he did a valiant job rescuing a marble fireplace from under several coats of paint.
In one corner, a heavy metal door connects to the old strongroom.
The couple kept it original but added several touches: two chairs and a table, a wind-up gramophone with some 78s, and banking ephemera such as scales, money boxes and Hankinson’s old bank book. We repair to here post-dinner, playing cards and enjoying complimentary Rutherglen muscat.
The king-size bedroom is in the bank manager’s office, and a corridor that led to the rear residence is now a dressing-room and ensuite. Overall, the tones are grey and charcoal with white highlights, plus ochre touches in the furnishings. And everywhere are fresh floral displays.
With a microwave and toaster, plates, cutlery and glasses, you could self-cater, but we venture out. Even though cafe Lamezleighs next door can deliver pre-ordered breakfast, we dine in, on shakshuka with sourdough or sweetcorn and zucchini fritters with fried kale and yoghurt. Further along is Jimmy Jambs, a cafe with no menu per se; just tell owner/chef Alan Nicholls what you’d like. Eggs benedict please. The place is lined with classic Australian album covers – remember Zoot or The Groop? – and Sugarman is on the soundtrack.
Lunch has a different vibe at Jacican, the Mirboo North home of Jaci Hicken, formerly a chef at Melbourne’s Sofitel.
As well as a cooking school, Hicken hosts occasional lunches called Walk in the Weeds, where guests help forage unusual ingredients from her rambling garden, for a five-course meal that progresses from the terrace into a restaurant in an old dairy.
Gippsland is lauded for its wine, especially savoury pinot noir, but cellar doors in this area are in short supply.
Holding the fort is Red Door Estate, possibly the region’s smallest winery, where owner John Neilson does everything himself and by hand. He and wife Adrienne do the rounds of the Saturday morning markets, then open for tastings the rest of the weekend. But don’t ask about the 2024 vintage.
A mini-tornado that whacked Mirboo North in February, shredding thousands of mature trees and badly damaging homes, also destroyed Neilson’s crop.
The town was soon back operating at 100 per cent and its landmark Grand Ridge Brewery didn’t miss a beat.
Victoria’s original craft brewer, starting in 1989, has adapted its suite of beers with the times, but owner Eric Walters says two originals, Hatlifter Stout and Gippsland Gold ale, still fly the flag. The tap room has an appropriately rustic feel, including a bistro with Italian leanings.
From its ridgetop position, Mirboo North has the easiest of cycling rail trails, a 13km, barely discernible descent through remnant rainforest to the hamlet of Boolarra.
Purely for foot traffic is the lush Lyrebird Walk, although it might be renamed Butterfly Walk, such is the entourage of black and gold accompanying us on an hour-long loop.
Otherwise there’s retail exercise. Bank on Ridgway sources its cinnamon infusion from among near neighbour Ruperts’ appealing range of giftware.
Mirboo North’s ArtSpace is a co-operative of Gippsland makers who offer distinctive art, jewellery, toys, soaps and candles.
We also spend up in tiny Thorpdale, ahead of a hearty lunch at the 1937 Travellers Rest Hotel, where publican Jill Jepson is infusing house-distilled vodka with local botanicals such as kunzea.
A farmgate has the freshest eggs, the bakery produces an amazing multi-grain sourdough, and we make a real find in the general store (which masquerades as an op shop): porridge spurtles hand-turned from Gippsland blackwood.
Then it’s back along Grand Ridge Road, via a natural gem, Mount Worth State Park. Even the shortest of its rainforest trails, Giants Circuit, has its reward, a loop past a 300-year-old giant mountain ash that’s fortunately still standing. The home journey’s relaxing soundtrack is Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Or, given it’s the Strzeleckis, in green.
In the know
Bank on Ridgway is $300 a night. Book through Airbnb.
FOR MORE STORIES ON AUSTRALIA, CLICK HERE.
Jeremy Bourke was a guest of Destination Gippsland.
