Welcome to The Local visitors guide

Welcome to the Autumn 2023 edition of The Local visitors guide to the Central Highlands.

We really hope you enjoy this edition. It’s packed with features on locals, places to head, markets to wander around and live music to enjoy. You can read the full stories, and this Visitors Guide, at www.tlnews.com.au

Front cover image: Beck Walker Autumn at The Convent Gallery in Daylesford!

This Visitors Guide is produced by The Local Publishing Group Pty Ltd.

Editor: Donna Kelly | General Manager: Kyle Barnes

Writers | Eve Lamb, Kevin Childs, Tony Sawrey & Donna Kelly

Photographer | Kyle Barnes

Accounts | Julie Hanson Delivery | Tony Sawrey

Christmas came a few days early for two of Daylesford’s best known families who discovered they’d just become the proud new owners of The Rex.

Following an unanimous councillor decision at Hepburn Shire Council’s December 20 meeting, Eddy and Malinka Comelli, left, and David and Yuge Bromley were delighted to discover their $3.75 million bid to purchase The Rex had been successful. David said a clinching factor in their decision to submit their joint EOI together with the Comellis was a mutual love of the town and a wish to see The Rex become a vibrant contributor to showcasing its main street. Both the Comelli and Bromley families live in Daylesford, have strong connections in the community and say they’re now keen to make the most of The Rex’s considerable potential. They would not be drawn on whether the community cinema would stay. “We want to make it a really culturally rich hub, whether it’s retail, hospitality, art, entertainment,” Yuge said. Read the full story at www.tlnews.com.au - Edition 271

After a Covid-enforced break, the Textile Palette Exhibition is back, being staged in Clunes over April 1-29, in the Clunes Warehouse for the first time.

The exhibition’s regional coordinator, Christine Lethlean, a talented textile artist who moved to Victoria from WA a decade ago, has called Clunes home for the past eight years, and runs regular workshops from her Clunes studio. She also teaches textile art Australia-wide. “I’ve always loved stitching,” says Christine, who is also a former health professional with a background that includes nursing, mental health nursing and art therapy. “We’re really talking about textile art as a visual art-form.” And the theme for this year’s exhibition is Time for Stitch. “After the past few years navigating the changes to our lifestyle and restrictions, what’s spoken of now is how the quiet time for creativity helped many of us cope. Sitting and stitching was a lifeline to maintaining a sense of normality, and keeping a focus and our creative motivation alive.”

Read the full story at www.tlnews.com.au - Edition 272

It’s not your average job description but being Australia’s “leading female magician and mentalist” is a profession Daylesford’s Cath Jamison simply loves.

“When I was a kid, five years old, I got a magic kit and I loved it. I was a quirky kid and I’m a quirky person.” Today, Cath’s mind-blowing and frequently uproarious shows have earned her a reputation as a leader in her field and she’s known as one of Australia’s most unusual women entertainers wielding her trademark sass, style, and mind illusion to captivate audiences. She’s been described in high profile places as ‘Ellen DeGeneres meets Derren Brown’, and this hilarious entertainer has won more awards and done more big gigs than you can wave a wand at. Think Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne Fringe, Adelaide FEAST and Midsumma Festival. Cath and her partner Nicole Peters moved from Mt Martha to Daylesford in 2021, and Cath says the town and wider locality ticked all their boxes.

Read the full story at www.tlnews.com.au - Edition 268

Carol White is calling time on Lavandula Swiss Italian Farm, putting the historic Shepherds Flat property up for sale.

Carol said it was time to move on from working seven days a week and return to travelling around the world. “Covid has been a bit of a nightmare, reopening every time after lockdowns just took every bit of my energy. It was like a juggler getting their six plates back in the air and then realising the stick was bent. It really crushed our momentum.” Carol, who bought the property 35 years ago and started out with just 1000 lavender bushes “from some guy in the Dandenongs”, said she hoped a new buyer would bring new energy and continue to conserve the history of the property. Carol said when she bought the 38-hectare property it was pretty much bare farming land with a couple of derelict buildings still standing. “My marriage was on the rocks and I thought I would start a business with a little patch of lavender, a romantic notion from my trips to Provence. I thought ‘I can manage that’.”

Read the full story at www.tlnews.com.au - Edition 271

Daylesford’s Victoria Park has been chosen as the site of Tinder’s Big Rainbow with the aim to have installation completed by the ChillOut Festival in March.

Daylesford was selected from a shortlist of four locations around Australia, including Broome in WA, Hay in NSW and Katherine in the NT, and announced as the winner in October last year. Hepburn Shire Council then invited feedback from the community on where the Big Rainbow should be located with four potential options in Daylesford –Victoria Park, the Lost Children’s Reserve, the Community Skate Park and Lake Daylesford. The landmark is six metres high by 12 metres wide and painted in the colours of the 2018 Progress Pride Flag. It is made from marine-grade plywood. Mayor Cr Brian Hood said Victoria Park was the standout position from both a community and council view. Cr Hood said each of the other three sites had concerns which played against them. Victoria Park also had the connection with ChillOut and the LGBTIQA+ community. “It just seemed like the logical choice.”

Read the full story at www.tlnews.com.au - Edition 273

Daylesford’s Alexis Saville and Odin Jonsson, who has just moved from Trentham to Ballarat, have been dating for just one month but have known each other for 10 years and been best friends for seven.

“So it feels like it’s been forever,” Odin says. The 21-year-olds were working on Valentine’s Day, Alexis at Kadota and Odin at Bells’ Watergardens, but Odin had a surprise weekend planned. In the spirit of love the couple agreed to meet for a photo on the ‘Love Locks’ bridge at Lake Daylesford - adding their own lock to the 453 already there. Happy Valentine’s Day. (A love lock or love padlock is a padlock that significant other pairs lock to a bridge, fence, gate, monument, or similar public fixture to symbolise their love. Typically the sweethearts’ names or initials, and perhaps the date, are inscribed on the padlock, and its key is thrown away - often into a nearby waterway to symbolise unbreakable love.)

Read the full story at www.tlnews.com.au - Edition 273

Humbled and “a bit surprised” is the way farmer John Drife describes discovering he’s this year’s Hepburn Shire Citizen of the Year.

At a civic event in Daylesford on January 25, the Hepburn Shire Council named John Citizen of The Year, also announcing Daylesford’s Atticus Punt-Trethewey as its Young Citizen of the Year. The Great Dividing Trail Association’s Reconciliation Walks took out Event of the Year as part of the shire’s 2023 Community Awards. “I was a little bit surprised. It’s very humbling just to be nominated and I’d like to congratulate all the others who were nominated,” John said. John and Billie Henderson-Drife farm sheep, cattle and crops in the GlendaruelMount Beckworth area just out of Clunes. Both of their families settled in the area in the mid-1800s. John paid special homage to his wife Billie, stating that he believed she deserved the award as well.

From left, Tim Bach, John Drife and Atticus Punt-Trethewey

Read the full story at www.tlnews.com.au - Edition 272

Creswick’s Craig Barrett is one of the region’s accomplished artists whose love of landscape and the natural world and the way human endeavour has interacted with it, resonates through his creative output.

He has works held in the National Gallery of Victoria, the State Library of Victoria and the Shrine of Remembrance in addition to private and corporate collections. “Over the past 45 years I have ventured through impressionism, abstraction, symbolism - wherever seems to be my sweet spot at the time. For the past 20 years, since living in the south of France with my then wife Kendry, I have been heavily influenced by Romanesque art of the 10th-12th centuries. I like its pared back simplicity. Things are implied rather than spelt out. A stripping back of detail. Art came to me - by magic. A friend of my mother’s gave me a small box of oil pastels (and) my eldest brother gave me a small set of oil paints when I was about 13 or 14. Hooked from thereon.”

Read the full story at www.tlnews.com.au - Edition 271