Discover the Great Southern
Matthew Evans passes through Margaret River and finds a foodie heaven in the south.
I once fell for a girl from Albany, a town on the cusp of southern Western Australia. I fell for her wit and smile, for her historic if slightly daggy city, for her region’s beaches dotted like a lamington’s long white coconut strands along the Great Southern’s shores. The girl’s gone but the love affair continues with the region’s cool-climate wines, its stunning Billawarra yoghurt, with its whales that breach in the stunning turquoise waters of King George Sound.
A town of almost 30,000 people, Albany was the first European settlement in WA. It was dependent on whaling for much of its early life, before it grew in status as regional centre of the Great Southern. The whaling station was the last to close in Australia, in 1978, and operates as a museum. These days the town has a university campus, a terrific arts centre and a thriving literary and music scene. It is also the centre of a burgeoning food region.
It seems the Great Southern, always the bridesmaid to flash and brash Margaret River, is on the verge of something great, both in terms of tourism and the tucker. It’s remarkable the region - which takes in the towns of Albany, Mount Barker and Denmark in a slice of south Western Australia two-thirds the size of Tasmania - isn’t more widely known. Blame it on the relatively dull four-and-a-half hour drive from Perth, perhaps. Albany isn’t much further from Perth than Margaret River but it lacks the latter’s millionaires and the infrastructure, though Albany has an airport and regular flights. It also has better and safer beaches and much for the taste junkie to discover.
There’s a relatively new distillery, Great Southern Distilling Company, doing single-malt whisky and gin on the outskirts of Albany. You can pick your own berries. Cherries and asparagus can be found at farm gates when the time is right. Billawarra, the two-cow dairy near Denmark, makes and sells yoghurt that is identified as coming from each hand-milked cow. Perhaps you’d like Heidi today, or Tulip?
My favourite focal point has always been Albany’s farmers’ market, a compact, highly sociable gathering that starts with the tinkling of a brass bell at 8am each Saturday. It’s testament to the stallholders and market co-ordinator Ian Haines that everything simply must come from the region. And while it’s not small in area, the Great Southern is sparsely populated and the temptation must be to bring in food from further afield. Thankfully, purity means you can buy Ray Gerovich’s pork that ranges free on the outskirts of town, the yabbies and organic beef are local, and there’s even Great Southern milk, Ravenhills.
source:smh