ANNIE SMITHERS
I love the pride small Australian country towns can take in their heritage. My life now straddles two small towns – Lyonville, where I live and garden, and nearby Trentham, where the restaurant is. Two towns with similar heritage, fiercely proud of their history. There is not much left in Lyonville these days, just a bloody good and wacky pub and a community of residents.
Lyonville hasn’t always been like this, however. In the middle of the 19th century it was just starting to come into its own. The gold rush and the building boom in Melbourne created an enormous appetite for timber and many brave souls took off to these hills and started to fell what must have been the most impressive of old forests. They cut and they cut and they cut, until some sensible person had an eye to the future and created the Wombat State Forest, instituted a replanting program, and the timber fellers and millers had to find other work.
Lyonville still holds a woodchop every February to honour the woodcutters who came before. But the shift from tree felling, along with a suitable local soil and climate, led the community to turn their attention to farming – in particular, potato farming.
Trentham has always been the bigger town of the two but, by the grace of not being connected by a major highway, has managed to keep its tiny, timbered town feel in place. Like Lyonville, Trentham started out as a timber town. As the forest was cleared, the rich seams of red dirt were farmed and planted with potatoes. It’s no surprise that the area was settled with families from Ireland, England and Scotland as the climate was, and still is, reminiscent of the old country with its fog, mists and snow. It must have been a real test of strength and character to clear and then to farm this region.
The tiny spud-pickers’ cottages dotted around the farms are testimony to a world where creature comforts were non-existent. And now at the beginning of May each year, when the harvest of potatoes is settling into full swing and the temperature is starting to drop, Trentham celebrates its heritage with a yearly Spudfest. So, to feel part of the local pride on May 5, here is a potato gnocchi dish, resplendent with brussels sprouts and hazelnuts – all things that thrive here in
• the hills of central Victoria.