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Hi there,
Thank you, to all of you who took the time to email us and comment on the last newsletter. It is great to know that people read it, and more importantly that it offered a ray of hope to those grappling with the nothing-but-bad-news on the economy that threatens to engulf us.
Some of you forwarded the newsletter to your friends – and we love that! Please feel free to spread the Australian Regional Food Guide news far and wide.
Right now Australia, the movie we have heard so much about, is beginning to screen in cinemas everywhere.
Now, our country – and particularly the bush – will be the place everyone wants to be. Suddenly, regional Australia is the place to go. It’s become trendy to leave the cities and get out and about in the country. Our country. Count yourself doubly-blessed if your area qualifies as ‘outback’.
So, how does it feel to be flavour of the month – or maybe even the year?
I found this interesting shape of 'Australian' letuce on my plate
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As you know, this site is primarily interested in food, which is a stroke of genius when you think about it, as every visitor is going to eat. Every visitor wants something they can’t get at home, whether they are from another country or a major Australian city. It’s our job – yours to deliver it, ours to promote it – to make sure every visitor experiences something they will never forget.
The best news is that it’s not hard to do.
- If you have a cafe, promote something that is absolutely fresh and dead-local on the sandwiches (fresh tomatoes, bread from the local baker, local cheese – whatever yells ‘your town’). Learn to make an excellent old-fashioned pot of tea (as well as that barista-standard coffee, of course!).
- Got a B&B? Squeeze local oranges for breakfast, bake your own bread, use eggs from your own hens or find someone who can supply them. Put a welcome-plate of your Gran’s prize-winning biscuits in the room.
- At the farm gate stall or shop, be a one-stop local expert on the area. Give out brochures, show people how to get to your neighbour who also produces something, explain to them what it is like to live where you do. Demonstrate country friendliness.
Visitors – let’s not call them tourists – are just like us. They are curious, ready to be amazed, and most of all they want to meet YOU and find out what you are doing, and what it’s like to live where you do. They want to take home a taste of your place, whether it’s in a jar or in their memories.
Do it right and you’ll become the stars of your very own real-life presentation of AUSTRALIA.
Cheers,
PRIZE TIME!
A few of you took the trouble to name Wingham, NSW’s wonderful cookery school Duck Under the Table as the place with the unusual name we were looking for and to check their Premier Listing and discover that their GPS coordinates (which we put as a little freebie extra on everyone’s Premier Listing) are 31.869049,152.374237.
Margaret Ertner, one of our many non-industry people who have signed up for this newsletter, was the first to contact us and she won a copy of our latest book Bamboo – a journey with Chinese Food which was a finalist for Travel Book of the Year in the 2008 Australian Society of Travel Writers’ Awards in Shanghai last month. Congratulations, Margaret!
 There are so many clever people around Australia and one of them is Isabell Shipard who with Shipard’s Herb Farm at Nambour or Queensland’s Sunshine coast has featured right from the beginning in the Australian Regional Food Guide.
For ten years we have been amazed at her lifetime of working with herbs and discovering healthy ways to live better. “My latest book,” she tells us “Self-Sufficiency and Survival Foods is just hot off the press….. so timely and full of practical ways of assisting every family.”
It is packed with valuable tips on how to plant a practical edible garden, how to pack a 72-hour survival kit, bush tucker plants we need to know, ideas on how to cut the costs of living and much, much more.
Isabell has very kindly offered to send a copy of her book to the first person in Australia, who has not already won a prize, who can answer this question:
Loquats are a strange yellow fruit indigenous to southern China and only rarely seen in fruit shops. Where in Australia, listed on our site, would I find them, and where (also listed on this site) is there a restaurant named for this fruit? Email Sally with the answer.
 In this edition of the Newsletter
How do you re-size images for web pages, or publication? What is the best way to email a quality image without overloading the mailbox? This is one of the most misunderstood but important aspects of digital imagery. Simple diagrammatic explanation of how pixels resolve themselves. |
IT’S NOT JUST US
Promotion of regional food is not just here in Australia. This came across our desks this week headed:
IN A TOXIC ERA, A HANGZHOU RESTAURANT PURSUES PURITY
A writer for the New Yorker, Fuchsia Dunlop, dined recently at the Dragon Well Manor, a restaurant in Hangzhou, China, close to the massive urban sprawl of Shanghai.
Dunlop accompanies the owner, Dai Jianjun, on trips to forage and meet rural suppliers. Jianjun makes sure that everything he serves will be made from natural ingredients, untainted by pesticides or other additives such as melamine, and with no added MSG. The menu is based on historic Chinese recipes and made, he says, with “local ingredients prepared according to the theories of Chinese medicine and the solar terms of the old agricultural calendar.”
Dai is concerned that traditional farming and cooking will not survive another generation, and wants to preserve traditional skills. Dunlop quotes him: “We can only do this on a small scale, but we must try to sustain our agricultural lore and culinary traditions for future generations.”
Hangzhou is well known for its beautiful lakes
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THE ROUNDUP CONTINUES
Mudgee Railway Station
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In our previous newsletter we mentioned some sensational places that promote the food and wine of their own region by including their region’s name in their business name.
We have added to the list but would still like to know if you know of any more. Drop us an email please.
- Taste of Canowindra (NSW)
- Absolutely Fabulously Local, Bonville, NSW
- Mudgee Gourmet@ the Railway (NSW)
- Taste of Balingup (WA)
- The Wagga Wagga Shop (NSW)
- Blue M Cafe (Katoomba, NSW)
- Producers of McLaren Vale (SA)
These places are so confident in the local produce they have built an entire enterprise around their neighbours and friends. Surely there must be more?
VALE:
100-mile Cafe. Sad news that this wonderful Melbourne cafe with a great concept will close its doors after Christmas. If you want to contact them, the phone number is 03 9654 0808, or contact@100milecafe.com.au
Occasionally we hear whispers of other restaurants bravely setting a geographical limit on the produce they will use.
Please tell us about these too. They deserve the recognition and publicity.
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HELP!!! POSITIONS VACANT!
If you are reading this, chances are you feel the same way we do about spreading the word on regional food.
We are working extremely hard to do this, but WE NEED YOUR HELP.
In order to keep current and know all about what is happening in the OVER 50 regions around this huge country we urgently need eyes, ears, scouts and – yes, guides – to give us the latest news of every region.
Let me be your eyes and ears
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Would you like to become an AUSTRALIAN REGIONAL FOOD GUIDE? ARF Guides will be our eyes and ears on the ground in the regions. Any local resident is eligible. You can be a producer, someone employed by tourism or the local council, a Visitor Information Centre volunteer, or just have an interest in food. Anyone is welcome.
All we ask is the same impartiality and standards we have used in compiling first the books and now the website. That is, a business or individual must be producing or promoting the local food (and that stretches to include local breweries, distilleries and fruit wineries) and they don't have to be members of any particular food or tourism group.
For now, we can’t list all the wineries. We’re not teetotallers by any means, and don’t want to upset the hundreds of fabulous wineries throughout the regions, but there are a lot of wine guides, and right now we have our hands full with food!
We cannot pay our ARF Guides but there will be some special benefits. To discuss this further, please Apply here.
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(Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone and everyone on your mailing lists. We want to spread the word about regional food!)
PLEASE TELL US if you have any special regional tricks of the trade that you have to bring people to your property or premises, or to spoil them with local produce, or entice them to try something they may not have thought of tasting. |
