 Early morning, Piper Street |
The streets of Kyneton, less than one hour from Melbourne Airport, are lined with fine old Victorian-era shops and hotels, legacies of the great gold rush of the mid-nineteenth-century. In Kyneton’s Piper Street the vision, the drive and the creativity of a handful of people has created a dining and shopping strip as alluring as any in the metropolis.
Graham Jasper, in an earlier life a successful Melbourne architect, liked the town where he spent his early boyhood so much that he began to buy it up, building by building. His entrepreneurship, together with that of his wife Margaret - who pursues her passion for Persian carpets to the land of the Ayatollahs - has become a driving force on Piper Street.
From pizzeria with pizzazz to fine dining at Annie Smithers Bistrot and Star Anise, Piper Street has enough to keep gourmands, as well as shoppers, strolling up and down its time-worm flagstones all day. The grand old Royal George Hotel, a legacy of the coaching days, offers a sophistication seldom seen outside city limits. Browse the Persian carpets and Venetian glassware at Emporium, a restored cheese factory. Here too is your opportunity to admire the creations of local silversmiths Flynn Silver, whose Bradshaw series evokes the enigmatic rock art of Western Australia’s Kimberleys. Image gallery
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