Vale business doubles

THERE’S a mini-boom happening in Korong Vale.

The number of businesss in in the main street will double when Jenny Bligh moves her discount store into the old Proctor’s General Store later this month after 30 years in Wedderburn.

And the reputedly-haunted Scully’s Korong Vale Hotel has new publicans with Max Scott and Craig Thompson taking over the lease from previous licensee Anne MacDonald.

Jenny, who started Bounty Discounts in February 1993, first traded from the old butchery before moving into Wedderburn’s old bakery and then her current High Street premises 14 years ago.

However, with that shop one of three now for sale, and the owner wanting vacant possession, Jenny looked nearer her home for new premises.

“I’ll still do deliveries of orders into Wedderburn every Thursday as well as picking up copies of the Loddon Herald that are always quickly snapped up by Korong Vale people,” she said.

Selling everything from hats and fascinators to toys, gifts and stationary, Bligh’s Discounts has become a Wedderburn institution over three decades.

“I’ve had a few locations over the years and many customers who keep coming back,” Jenny said.

“When I needed to look for new premises, the opportunity to move the shop to Korong Vale came up. Now the packing starts to be into the new premises later this month.”

Jenny said preparations had also started at the former Proctor’s store, that closed earlier this century.

Meanwhile, Max and Craig have already started brightening up Scully’s Hotel.

An early addition to freshlypainted walls has been a photograph of Annie Scully who had the hotel built in 1891.

Local resident Yvonne Cashen arranged with Wedderburn Historical Records Museum to have a photograph of the hotel’s name- sake framed for display. Max, a diesel mechanic, and former sawmill worker Craig swapped Gippsland life for the ‘Vale last month. Their first weeks have been spent stripping up to four layers of wallpaper from walls and painting the hotel in heritage colours.

Korong Vale’s population hit a peak of about 600 people in the 1930s when a large rail workforce sustained the town Railway rationalisation in the 1980s saw the town’s population decline and the school closed in 1998.

In Brief

National awards

BOORT butchers Jye and Kristy Arnold are this weekend at the national Sausage King awards in Adelaide. The local butchers last November took out prizes for the shortcut bacon and Italian pork sausage in Victoria.

Grass fire

A FIRE spread through more than 10 hectares of grassland at Woodstock West on Tuesday afternoon before it was brought under control. A chopper gave aerial support to brigades including Inglewood, Lockwood, Dunolly, Marong, Woodstock West, Tarnagulla and Newbridge. It is believed the fire was started by farm machinery.

Interest in store

The last Census put Korong Vale’s population at 143.

The town continues to have its own tennis club although the bowls side went into recess this season.

And life at Scully’s Hotel also includes a darts team in the Loddon association.

Yvonne said the new publicans had quickly become part of the community, keeping the hotel as a meeting place for locals.

“They’re wonderful,” she said as families sat in the beer garden or under the historic verandah on the hotel’s famous couches.

THERE had been strong interest from prospective buyers in the Newbridge Store and post office, said real estate agent Greg Fathers. Mr Fathers said the historic store had gone on the market last year and negotiations were continuing with interest parties.

Road fatality

A 30-YEAR-OLD Dunolly woman has been killed in a road crash at Laanecoorie. A utility and a SUV collided at the intersection of Bendigo- Maryborough Road and Bridgewater- Maldon Road just after 8am Monday. Police said the driver of the SUV died at the scene.