Three-day Limestone Coast Winter itinerary
Whether you come to taste rarity wine as part of July’s Coonawarra Cellar Dwellers, or to experience the glow-in-the-dark Ghost Mushrooms that only appear in Mt Gambier’s forests during May or June, there’s plenty in this region to feed your curiosity throughout winter.
DAY ONE
Coffee and Breakfast | Drift
A new Robe café with delightful refurbished 1960s architecture, fireplace, lap rugs for winter days on the patio, and menu of breakfast classics refined with ethical produce and fresh seafood influences.
Drift, Robe. Photo: Tyrone Ormsby
Lunch | No. 4 or Pizza Project
Activity | Robe Town Brewery
The wood-fired process brewing process used here makes delicious beer of all kinds, but has a particularly positive influence on darker, winter-friendly beers like stout because it encourages sugars to caramelise, creating a perfect balance between the sweet and bitter flavours.
Robe Town Brewery. Photo: Tyrone Ormsby
Accommodation | Trader Jacks or Mrs Banks or The White House
These three properties in Robe – with their open plan spaces, crackling wood fires, heritage buildings, on-point interior styling, and, in the case of Trader Jacks, an old-world bathtub in the middle of the room – should be considered forerunners for the prize of most romantic winter accommodation ever.
Trader Jacks. Photo: Tyrone Ormsby
DAY TWO
Coffee and Breakfast | Bay Blue Espresso Bar
In a chic, minimal interior, the Bay Blue team are leading the Limestone Coast’s coffee revolution by dishing up perfectly extracted coffee from White Whale Coffee Roasters alongside house-made cakes, biscuits, and lunches.
Bay Blue Expresso Bar. Photo: Tyrone Ormsby
Activities | Kilsby Sinkhole or Mount Schank or Leg of Mutton crater or Ghost Mushroom Lane
Lunch | Presto Eatery
Drink | Morrison Jazz Club or Sample Good Intentions Wine Co at Macs Hotel
Dinner | The Barn restaurant or Mayura Station (if you don’t mind a drive!)
Each service night, Mark Wright – head chef and manager of Mayura’s onsite restaurant The Tasting Room– speaks directly with diners at the restaurant, offering a friendly serve of wagyu education all while dishing up a degustation menu of Mayura beef that is so tender and tasty it must be tried to be believed.
Accommodation | Colhurst House
Located in Mount Gambier, Colhurst House is a testament to the perfectionism of its host – Patty Forster. The 1800s mansion offers four guestrooms, each of which balances the over-the-top elegance of the historic building with the minimal and clean aesthetic of modern travel. The only thing more warming on a winter’s morning than the enormous bathtub in each room is Patty’s traditional full-cooked breakfast.
Colhurst House. Photo: Tyrone Ormsby
DAY THREE
Coffee and Breakfast | The Coonawarra Store
Activities | Wine tasting at Brand’s Laira or Coonawarra Cellar Dwellers or Penola Coonawarra Arts Festival
Lunch | Drink Ottelia + Eat Fodder
Here, front of house legend Matilda Innes and chef Paul Stone have swapped working in high-end Melbourne restaurants such as Supernormal for working in the winery and restaurant originally established by Matilda’s parents. Winter visitors are well advised to ask for a glass of Otellia’s pinot noir alongside a serve of the absolutely un-missable ricotta gnocchi.
Drink Otellia + Eat Fodder. Photo: Tyrone Ormsby
Dinner | Royal Oak Hotel
Replete with roaring open fires, local craft beer (try The Side Project Pale Ale), a bottle shop stocking Sinkhole Gin (made using local botanicals and water from the aquifer that feeds the Kilsby Sinkhole), and possibly the best kangaroo dish ever made (featuring wild-caught roo and saltbush foraged from Canunda National Park) – the Royal Oak may well be the perfect winter pub.
At fine-dining restaurant Pipers of Penola, partners in life and business Erika and Simon Bowen bring modern flourishes to timeless dishes in a prettily re-purposed church.
Pipers of Penola. Photo: Tyrone Ormsby
Accommodation | Glamping at Bellwether Wines
Glamping at Bellwether Wines. Photo: Tyrone Ormsby
Solstice Media has partnered with the South Australian Tourism Commission to tell South Australian’s the reason why they need to take their next holiday in their own state.
To keep reading about the Limestone Coast, click here.