editorial

Words by Christopher P. Hill Photographs by Christopher P. Hill November 6, 2024
A lesser-known region in southeastern Australia brims with attractions, not the least of which is an ascendant food and drink scene.
<figure id="attachment_139763" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-139763" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-139763 size-full" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-2.jpg" alt="Outside Loch Brewery &amp; Distillery; a lounge area in Ross Farm’s three-bedroom Dairy building." width="1200" height="893" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-139763" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: Outside Loch Brewery &amp; Distillery; a lounge area in Ross Farm’s three-bedroom Dairy building.</figcaption></figure>
One meal was all it took for me to start planning a road trip into the Victorian countryside. It was a lunch at <a href="https://www.farmersdaughters.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Farmer’s Daughters</a>, a bustling restaurant in downtown Melbourne where Peruvian-born chef Alejandro Saravia showcases the bounty of rural Gippsland. Sprawling across the southeastern part of the state, this bucolic region yields some of Australia’s best produce, meats, and dairy, alongside small-batch wines and an abundance of seafood. It’s a place that Saravia fell in love with after moving to Melbourne a decade ago, and Farmer’s Daughters is his love letter to Gippsland’s farms, fields, and fisheries. One bite of his grass-fed beef carpaccio with crème fraiche and cider caramel was enough to woo me too, and by the time I finished dessert — a perfectly wobbly panna cotta fashioned from Jersey cream, honey syrup, and bee pollen — I’d already plotted out a four-day Gippsland getaway.
I arrived in Bairnsdale on a sunny late-autumn afternoon. Set on a bend of the Mitchell River, the laid-back country town is the hub of East Gippsland and the end of the line for trains from Melbourne, some 280 kilometers to the west. After procuring a vehicle, my first stop was <a href="https://lightfootwines.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lightfoot</a>, a family-run vineyard and winery overlooking the patchwork fields of the Lindenow Valley, just a short drive from town. Gippsland may have been a relatively late entrant to the Australian wine scene, but the region’s mild climate and varied terroirs have attracted growing numbers of serious, if small-scale vignerons since the 1990s. Pinot noir and chardonnay predominate, as they do at Light-foot’s Myrtle Point vineyard, which is planted on clay-rich soil along a limestone bluff. I gazed out at the distant vines from the deck of the winery’s cellar door (that’s Australian for “tasting room”), enjoying delightfully bright sips from last year’s harvest.
From there, I made my way back to Bairnsdale and followed the course of the Mitchell to Gippsland Lakes. This is the country’s largest expanse of inland waterways, a 350-square-kilometer system of shallow lakes, lagoons, and salt marches separated from the open waters of the Bass Strait by a slender strip of coastline named Ninety Mile Beach. Home to the state’s largest fishing fleet, the area is also speckled with easy-going holiday towns like Lakes Entrance, Metung, and Paynesville, where I checked in to a canal-backed motel called <a href="https://www.marinerscoveresort.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mariners Cove</a> (from US$146 a night).
<figure id="attachment_139749" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-139749" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-139749 size-full" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-4.jpg" alt="A view from the Lightfoot winery near Bairnsdale." width="1200" height="800" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-4.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-4-300x200.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-4-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-4-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-139749" class="wp-caption-text">A view from the Lightfoot winery near Bairnsdale.</figcaption></figure>
Paynesville is a boater’s haven, its waterfront bristling with jetties that afford direct access to lakes Victoria and King. A five-minute ferry ride away is a sanctuary of a different sort. Inhabited by about 500 people, Raymond Island also harbors substantial numbers of koalas, which were introduced here in the 1950s. Sightings are pretty much guaranteed: I spotted at least a dozen of the fuzzy creatures dozing in the forks of eucalyptus trees on a 30-minute walk.
Dinner that night was at <a href="https://sardinedining.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sardine Dining</a>, whose British-born owner and chef, Mark Briggs, worked in some of Melbourne’s top kitchens before relocating to Paynesville in 2017. Smartly decorated, the town’s sole destination restaurant serves dishes suffused with local, seasonal flavors; I tried a duckfish tartare lacquered in shiso ponzu as well as quail skewers and, glistening in a pool of chive oil, fresh-off-the-boat sardine fillets.
The next morning I set off for Metung. By boat, it’s fewer than a dozen kilometers across the lake from Paynesville; by car, getting there took me about 40 minutes, not including a breakfast stop at Bairnsdale’s popular café-cum–wine bar <a href="https://northernground.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Northern Ground</a>.
<figure id="attachment_140030" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-140030" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-140030" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-6-1.jpg" alt="A koala on Raymond Island; overlooking a tree fern–filled gully inside Tarra Bulga National Park." width="1200" height="894" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-140030" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: A koala on Raymond Island; overlooking a tree fern–filled gully inside Tarra Bulga National Park.</figcaption></figure>
Beyond the Tambo River, East Gippsland’s outstretched farm country eventually gave way to the undulating terrain of the nine-hole Metung Country Club and the neighboring <a href="https://www.metunghotsprings.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metung Hot Springs</a> (from US$330 a night), my home for the night. Accommodation here comes in the form of 10 safari-style glamping tents set above a freshwater lagoon on a hillside thick with banksia trees; some jut out on stilts over the water. Kitted out with four-poster beds and organic bath products, they’re supremely comfortable, though the 10-hectare site’s main draw is its circuit of outdoor geothermal baths, fed by a mineral-rich aquifer deep below the ground. There’s also a collection of individual bathing barrels set into a eucalyptus-shaded escarpment overlooking Lake King.
While the nearest dining option was a 10-minute walk away at the golf course’s clubhouse, I instead drove 20 kilometers to Lakes Entrance (so named because it sits at the channel connecting the Gippsland Lakes to the ocean) for dinner at <a href="https://sodafish.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sodafish</a>. Housed in a former Raymond Island ferry, the floating restaurant shares its wharf with dozens of fishing boats, so the seafood is as fresh as it comes. The prawns in my delicious pangrattato-dusted spaghettini, the menu noted, were brought in by a boat called Nina. I happily washed them down with an IPA from Sailors Grave, one of the region’s most popular craft breweries.
Later that night, I made use of one of the two private bathing barrels on my tent’s timber deck, submersing myself up to my armpits in 40°C water. Bliss — until my steamy reverie was shattered by a pair of glowing red eyes staring at me from a tree. Before I had the chance to move (or scream), the possum blinked and scurried off into the darkness.
<figure id="attachment_139760" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-139760" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-139760 size-full" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-3.jpg" alt="One of the glamping tents at Metung Hot Springs; accompaniments to a wine tasting at Lightfoot." width="1200" height="893" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-3.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-3-300x223.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-3-1024x762.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-3-768x572.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-139760" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: One of the glamping tents at Metung Hot Springs; accompaniments to a wine tasting at Lightfoot.</figcaption></figure>
A two-hour drive the next day brought me to the Strzelecki Ranges, a set of low mountain ridges that straddle the shires of South and West Gippsland. For lunch, I stopped at <a href="https://carrajung.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Carrajung Estate</a>, a recently revamped vineyard operation with guest cottages, a small herd of alpacas, and a restaurant that looks out onto neat rows of grapes. Originally from San Diego, chef Patrick Haney has embraced the region’s culinary bounty with gusto; my grass-fed osso buco with barley was accompanied by honey-roasted heirloom carrots and new potatoes drizzled with zesty aji verde.
From there, the snaking course of the Grand Ridge Road took me through wooded hills to <a href="https://www.parks.vic.gov.au/places-to-see/parks/tarra-bulga-national-park" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tarra Bulga National Park</a>, a mossy wilderness canopied by myrtle beeches and towering, gray-barked eucalypts known as mountain ashes. I stretched my legs on a walking trail that led to a suspension bridge above a gully thick with primeval-looking tree ferns. On the stroll back to the parking area, a small brown wallaby bounded across the track. Moments later, a superb lyrebird appeared. Pheasant-like, it was distinguished by an impressive plumed tail and what has rightly been described as one of the most elaborate and beautiful songs of the avian world.
Back down toward the coast again, I followed the bucolic South Gippsland Highway to the small country town of Meeniyan, stopping en route for a cider tasting in the bunker-like cellar at <a href="https://gurneyscider.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gurneys Cidery</a>, a family-run business that grows its own heritage apple trees on the surrounding estate. (Their twice-distilled apple brandy, aged in French oak barrels for seven years, was as tasty as any Calvados you’d find in Normandy.)
<figure id="attachment_139758" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-139758" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-139758 size-full" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-5.jpg" alt="The front deck of Ross Farm’s Cabin; Carrajung Estate’s chef Patrick Haney." width="1200" height="893" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-5.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-5-300x223.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-5-1024x762.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-5-768x572.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-139758" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: The front deck of Ross Farm’s Cabin; Carrajung Estate’s chef Patrick Haney.</figcaption></figure>
Twenty minutes up the road I arrived at <a href="https://www.rossfarm.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ross Farm</a> (from US$265 a night) just as the sun was setting. More self-catering rental than hotel, the property comprises three reimagined farm buildings done up in a contemporary rural style that favors rustic, textural materials like raw plywood, charred timber, aged brass, and travertine. I was given the keys to the one-bedroom Cabin, and instantly regretted not booking a longer stay, if only to take advantage of its Japanese-style wooden bath and a front deck with wide views of the Tarwin Valley’s rolling pastures. As it was, I had to rush to make my dinner appointment at <a href="https://trulli.com.au/">Trulli</a>, just down the hill in Meeniyan. A surprising find in a town of 700 people, the place is run by Italian brothers Francesco and Claudio Laera, who shine a spotlight on the earthy cucina povera of their native Puglia, here enriched by pristine Gippsland produce. The made-to-order burrata was one highlight (“The milk here, so fresh!” said Claudio, with a chef’s kiss). Anchovy-scented cavatelli with broccoli rabe was another.
The next morning I headed back to Melbourne, but not without making one last stop. Surrounded by rippling hills near the western edge of South Gippsland, the pretty village of Loch is home to its own little food scene as well as <a href="https://lochbrewery.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Loch Brewery &amp; Distillery</a>, a boutique operation run by former Melburnians Craig Johnson and Melinda Davies. At their cellar door, which occupies a 1902 red-brick bank building, I sampled a terrific single-malt whisky (they also make small-batch gins and English-style ales) as Johnson extoled the virtues of the region.
“There’s so much going on now, not only in wine and spirits and beer, but also with great cheese makers and bakers and other producers,” he said. “We’re really seeing a Gippsland renaissance.”
<figure id="attachment_139759" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-139759" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-139759 size-full" src="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-1.jpg" alt="Osso buco with barley, oven-roasted spatchcock, and local veggies at the Carrajung Estate restaurant; Loch Brewery &amp; Distillery’s Craig Johnson and Melinda Davies." width="1200" height="893" srcset="https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-1.jpg 1200w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-1-300x223.jpg 300w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-1-1024x762.jpg 1024w, https://staging.destinasian.com/wp-content/uploads/Gippsland-Australia-1-768x572.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-139759" class="wp-caption-text">Left to right: Osso buco with barley, oven-roasted spatchcock, and local veggies at the Carrajung Estate restaurant; Loch Brewery &amp; Distillery’s Craig Johnson and Melinda Davies.</figcaption></figure>
This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://subscription.destinasian.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">October/November 2024</a> print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Gippsland on the Go”).

Exploring Gippsland through a Gourmet Road Trip