Last weekend I spent 2 days in Gundagai with my man, and were so very pleasantly surprised. I had driven past Gundagai many times over the years but had never driven into the town.

Arguably best known from the song “track winding back”, there is also much history to this lovely town on the Murrumbidgee. Floods, the relocating of the town up into the hills, Captain Moonlight (heralding from Co Tyrone in Northern Ireland like our Dad), the bridges, the painted hotel, the famous Niagra greek cafe where newspaper articles on the walls tell the story of visiting past Prime Ministers, Curtain and Menzies among them, the beautiful historic buildings… and everything is in walking distance.

The town is smaller than I had envisaged, just 2,500 in population. Everybody we met was very friendly and interested in what we were doing in town (relaxing). Saturday afternoon we went to Paterson’s Winery. We had to ring the winemaker to open the shed but the wines were great and very reasonably priced ($13 whites and $15 reds) so we ended up with a mixed dozen.

Saturday night we had dinner in the quaint Poet’s Recall Hotel which is named and decorated in honour of famous poets. In the old town of Gundagai these poets had streets named after them but this was not repeated in the new relocated town. The hotel is run by Pat who has been there 3 years, and Kaitlin and Olivia served us with bright smiles and a can do attitude.  This “all girl affair ” (Pat’s words), includes Olivia’s mum as the chef and we had real mash with our perfect scotch fillet, washed down with a fabulous “track winding back” Shiraz from Gundagai wines.

Sunday a visit to Gundagai Wines where we had home made pizza.  They had to squeeze us in on the veranda as they were fully booked. Pizza Sunday 4th Sunday of every month) is a well known secret locally!!

Andy from Gundagai Wines told me a Tourism Action Group has been formed. So, the forgotten town is standing up. The transformation has begun.

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