Pomonal is the kind of place people drive through on the way to somewhere else and spend the next few years planning how to get back to. A handful of businesses, a general store, some extraordinary views, and ten minutes from the Nook. Worth doing properly. Lake Fyans An easy loop with water views and […]

Dunkeld sits at the southern end of the Grampians, about forty minutes from the Nook. It’s the kind of town that rewards slowing down — small enough to be genuinely quiet, specific enough in its pleasures that you leave having done something rather than just having driven somewhere. Make a day of it. Walk Mt […]

There’s a version of Gariwerd most people never see. It arrives between May and September, settles in quietly, and stays for months. The visitors thin out. The trails open up. The mornings get cold and bright and worth waking up for. The off-season here isn’t a compromise. It’s a different trip. What Changes When the […]

When we first moved to this hill, it was a cleared paddock. Open sky, dry ground, a blank slate that didn’t know what it could become. We had a rough idea, and a good nursery not far away. Half an acre of native garden later, we have our answer. Vaughan’s Native Nursery Almost everything in […]

There’s a particular kind of magic that settles over Gariwerd in spring. It arrives quietly — first in the low scrub along the ridgelines, then spreading across the valley floor in waves of colour that are almost impossible to name. Orchids. Trigger plants. A dozen shades of yellow and violet that no paint chart has […]