A tale of two lochs

Yesterday we came back from an overnight stay with friends in Inverloch which doesn't sound much like a long break, and I suppose it's not, but it's actually surprising how much such a tiny break - an excursion really - can feel almost like a holiday. And also if you care to, how many odd little bits of information you can pick up.

The photograph is of Loch, not Inverloch - the second of the two lochs in question here. Loch is a tiny village where we stopped for lunch on our way back to Melbourne yesterday. And I have to really adjust to the fact that I am indeed talking about yesterday, although it seems like a dream rapidly disappearing into the distant past.

Perhaps I'll start with those two names - with 'loch' in common. Of course we probably all know that 'loch' is the Scottish for lake, so I assumed that Inverloch was named after a Scottish town of the same name by somebody who lived there, because there is no lake in Inverloch - it's the seaside isn't it? But no, there is no Inverloch in Scotland - what there is is Lochinver - shown here. It's name means Lake Entrance.

So does Inverloch have a lake? Well sort of. It has Anderson's Inlet - which you can see in the aerial photograph below. In fact Inverloch was first named Anderson's Inlet after the first European to settle permanently in Gippsland, near here - Samuel Anderson - a Scot who although trained as a bookeeper recognised the fertility of the land and planted crops in 1835 on the banks of the Bass River. So yes Inverloch means entrance to the lake - the lake being the inlet. You would therefore think that the change of name in 1889, was to recognise that fact.

But no the Bass Coast Council has documents that seem to think that it was named Inverloch:

"presumably in honour of Sir Henry Brougham Loch, Governor of. Victoria" 

He became governor in 1884 and was apparently very popular - and he does indeed look genial at least. I can see that the village of Loch may well have been named for him, but Inverloch? Surely the entrance to a lake theory and the Scottish nature of it all rings much more true.

Today Inverloch has a small permanent population and a large contingent who drop in and out and spend most of their summers there in their holiday houses. We have a few neighbours with homes there, and it is constantly growing in size. It is also a short drive away from Wonthaggi - a regional centre for the area having Victoria's desalinantion plant, and also housing an actual hospital.

The friends we were visiting were staying in the holiday house of their very longtime friends, something they had been doing for many, many years. Below is a shot from the road, although it is more of an atmospheric shot than a representation of the house, because all you can really see from the road is the garage door, such is the leafy nature of the block. We learnt that it's history as a holiday home is much the same as many such places. Bought cheaply as a small weatherboard house to escape to in the heat of summer, it has been extended to now be able to house the families of children and grandchildren as well as the original owners, including a bunk room into which all the kids are housed to their great delight.

We ourselves considered the holiday house thing in our younger days, but lazy people that we are, decided a second home was too much bother, and it was better to just move to a larger block and build a larger home. Every now and then I wonder if we made the right move. Maybe our more youthful summers might have been more joyful and relaxed, for David's high stress job meant that there were not many holidays. Whereas if there had been a holiday home, the rest of us may well have just decamped to the beach, and David could have joined us at the weekends - for holiday homes are inevitably on the beach, but not very far from home.

Food. I should say something about food. Inverloch has a number of cafés of course, but many fewer places to eat at night. But, of course, as with every country town there is the local pub. In fact I think Inverloch has two and we chose the Esplanade - commonly - of course - known as the Espy. Here in Australia names are always abbreviated - but not Inverloch apparently. It was busy with all those holiday visitors from old to young - I noticed one large table of young people - old teenagers, or young twenties, and another of oldies like us, with everything else in between. And the food - just what you would expect, so I had my favourite fish and chips, two had steak and one had chicken schnitzel - the bonus being that we were old so qualified for the Senior's Special at $24.00 for two courses. Not haute cuisine but actually pretty nice.

The highlight of this particular experience - for me anyway was the T'Gallant Cape Schanck rosé. We chose it because it was local. Cape Schanck is just down the road. But of course it's not that local. T'Gallant is based on the Mornington Peninsula, which is sort of close, but not quite just down the road. Moreover the grapes come from Heathcote it says on the bottle, and various wine sites say from multiple sites.

But it was rather lovely and yet at the same time almost tasteless. Perhaps a politer way of saying that would be to say that it was ethereal, light, delicate - and not only was the taste elusive, so was the colour which was so pale, that in the neck of the bottle it was almost colourless. Pinot Noir, Grenache and Mataro it said on the bottle, although one website said mostly Grenache. It was a beautiful summer wine. I would certainly have it again.

And did I mention that we walked to the pub? - 2 kilometres there - alongside the beach which is apparently being eroded by the sea. So much so, in fact, that the Surf club is in danger of being washed into the sea. We walked back along the town roads - another 2 kilometres, so I got my walk in for the day. We felt virtuous.

And what of Loch? We had decided with our friends to drive to Korrumburra (nickname Burra) - a small regional town and Loch, as a slight detour to the main road drag from Melbourne. For me it was interesting to note - in both of these places - how many of the shops were varieties of upmarket opshops, artycrafty shops, and not many 'ordinary' ones. I guess that in these areas there is not much local industry other than the dairy farming that dominates the region's agriculture. There are lots of picturesque cows and several small cheesemakers that you pass along the road. Korrumburra did have an 'Industrial area' on the outskirts of the town, and maybe - as in France - there was a 'shopping area' on the other side of town. We certainly did not see any 'real' shops in town. Well I think we may have spotted the back of a small kind of IGA. As witness the photographs below - but quite a lot of really good street art. The two little statuettes were in the window of a shop dedicated to awards. I have no idea what the flying pig was an award for. But look at that painted shop front. It's not real of course, but it is a real shopfront. And in one of those sort of op shops I found a copy of Venezia by Tess Kiros, which I snapped up - another one to add to the pile to 'review'. I say sort of op shop because the prices, for the cookbooks anyway, were rather higher than in the general op shop, and everything was rather more artfully arranged as well.

As for Loch - a tiny village, with a short street full of cafés, a restaurant and arty crafty shops. Very lovely but one had to wonder where the locals - if there were any - shopped for food and the other necessities of life. We lunched in the Loch Village Foodstore and Café because the other two options seemed to be full. Our choice had an amazingly furnished back room where we ate our lunch - very olde-worlde in an Australian kind of way. The food was similar to café food everywhere - our choices - corn fritters and salad for me, a muffin for David, pumpkin soup for Christine and I cannot now quite remember what for the other David. But so slow to be served. Not that this mattered as we were just meandering and enjoying each other's company. Nevertheless one wonders why it took so long, as there were not that many customers, and there were three or four staff.

Full marks however, to these tiny places, out in the countryside which are trying hard to attract tourists to their districts, and stop the flow of people to the big smoke. Melbourne after all is a mere two hours away by road - albeit busy ones, but largely motorway or at least dual carriageway.

I asked our friends why they thought there were not more actual restaurants in Inverloch, for to my mind Inverloch was a constantly busy weekend retreat place for many wealthy Melburnians. Their theory - probably correct - that although it might look busy, in fact. there would not generally be enough people out of holiday periods to support them. Maybe it's just that little bit too far away and doesn't have large enough tourist attractions - like boat trips and balloon rides and many, many vineyards. There are some vineyards however, and Loch had a beer distillery. Here and there were those Artisan cheese farms, and the occasional berry farm. But really it's just a calm spot on the beach with enough infrastructure to entice families for a while, but not enough to keep them there long.

But weren't we lucky to escape the massive amount of rain dumped on the coast on the other side of Melbourne.

THE FRIDGE - On our return I had to cook dinner - so chose to do a quick pasta - Pea pesto carbonara from Coles, which allowed me to make a small amount of progress in the fridge. It's not really a carbonara - there is no egg, cream and cheese sauce the carbonara bit just comes from the bacon. In fact it's closer to Spaghetti pesto really, because although you are supposed to make the pesto bit as you go, really it's just pesto with some - no quite a lot - of cooked frozen peas added - in part as they are and in part, crushed into the pesto. So I got rid of some of the bacon which needs to be used soon, and half a jar of pesto that I had made, not to mention the rest of the bag of frozen peas in the freezer, although that's a no-win thing as they have been replaced today. Frozen peas are a necessity. However, as a last minute thought I added the remains of the cheesy filling (with buttery braised grated zucchini) for the kataifi pastries I had made for my son and his boys. A really good idea as it turns out, but without it, it would still have been good. A keeper of a recipe. and infinitely variable. Add other vegetables, do the carbonara thing properly, chilli, sausage or ham instead of the bacon ...

YEARS GONE BY

January 16

2025 - Nothing

2024 - How basic can you get? Bread sauce

2023 - Noma, Harry, OTK ... what do they have in common?

2022 - A recipe and Marsala

2021 - Missing

2020 - Nothing

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Shopping centres - more food, fewer shops?

2017 - My morning coffee