Despite the cold weather (remember I now live in Queensland!), I did head off on my early morning walk, and was rewarded with the chance to get some photos of Daylesford’s main street, minus the dozens of cars and hundreds of people.
Gold was discovered in this area in 1851, and the quality and age of some of the town’s buildings indicate the mining was very successful.
These old buildings look as if once upon a time they were hotels. And actually, one of them still is. The Royal Hotel, built in 1916, provides a venue for meals and a drink as well as a bed if you need it.
What was different though, is that a large part of the Royal Hotel’s ground floor is taken up by a very classy antique shop where I had to talk Mick out of buying a pair of beautifully restored, (HUGE) antique lounge chairs, which hailed all the way from France.
They were beautiful, but I didn’t think they’d fit into our new ‘down-sizing’ plan.
The original school sits in a prime location, around 250m from the Tourist Office in the main street. It was pretty impressive, but I bet it would be cold in the winter.
After breakfast, we visited the huge under-cover market which consisted of dozens of store holders, each displaying their goods alongside other stores trying to sell all sorts of goodies, antiques and junk. While the visit kept us occupied and interested, we left empty-handed.
We ventured back to the main street shops and spent another few hours ‘window shopping’.
Mick was thrilled when he found a huge, (mostly) second-hand bookshop, which was on four levels (I think) with fourteen different rooms of subject-specific tomes.
Mick’s eyes lit up when he found the comic book room. In a past life, Mick used to collect Phantom comics. He had quite an extensive and valuable collection of mostly Phantom comics, including some very rare editions.
Sadly, back in the early 2000’s, his rarest comics, which were housed in a very smart timber box (an old wine box I think – back before we had even discovered wine tasting as a hobby), were destroyed by white ants. This was not only a disaster for his collection, but it did take some work to ensure our home was fully repaired and the unwanted visitors were removed.
He sold his remaining collection (for chicken feed) shortly afterwards, having lost his enthusiasm for collecting.
Many of the buildings in Vincent Street, including the book shop, had once been banks; hinting back to the money that the town had made from the discovery of gold. This was the Town Hall though, and Mick was obviously interested in some of the detail on the building.
One of our final stops for the day was to an art gallery in the main street – Bromley & Co. While it had a rather narrow street frontage, once inside the gallery expanded into a huge space. Which was all good and well, as it housed some very large pieces of art.
This photo gives you a sense of the scale of some of the artworks. Mick was getting a good look at this piece and while I tried to remind him to not touch the art – he chose to ignore me!!
We actually did not leave this place empty-handed!
Our final booking for the day was for dinner in a well-known Daylesford restaurant, which boasts two Chefs Hat – Lake House. A good friend of ours who lives in Melbourne had actually suggested we go to The Surly Goat in Hepburn Springs, but when this was not open on Mondays, he suggested we should try Lake House. The limited menu was amazing and we both enjoyed our choices. Many of the ingredients for each course were grown on their own farm.
Desserts were spectacular and I could not resist a few photos.
This was definitely a full day.
We went to bed with very full tummies but maybe not so full wallets!!
Jane and Mick's Holiday Adventures 