SALIFE hits the road to meet the dynamic people reinventing our state's regional cuisine. From the Limestone Coast to Eyre Peninsula, we discover that what makes South Australia's regional hospitality scene so rich, is the beautiful tapestry of stories from those who bring it to life.

Words Ben Kelly and Zoe Rice

Jacka Brothers Brewery
Melrose, Flinders Ranges

It’s like something straight out of a Grand Designs episode: a run-down, historic stone landmark in the countryside, and a couple with elaborate dreams of transforming it into a boutique accommodation, brewery and venue for weddings, food and live music. Well, after almost a decade of hard work, Yorke Peninsula teachers Dale and Michelle Hobbs have achieved their vision in the small Southern Flinders town of Melrose.

With a name that honours the property’s original brewery and 1877 flour mill, Jacka Brothers Brewery is now a truly remarkable beacon for visitors, bringing people to the region from far and wide. When SALIFE visits Jacka Brothers Brewery, dozens of picnic tables are filling up with visitors enjoying wood-fired pizzas and flame-grilled meals, with boutique beer, wine and spirits, all with a front-row view to Mount Remarkable.

Dale and Michelle and their three children have dedicated their weekends and holidays to restoring the historic property. “The property was certainly run-down when we bought it, and under the agreement the shed still operated as a shearing shed for our first year, which gave us time to solidify our plans,” says Dale.

The Hobbs family are just the fourth owners of the property in 147 years. It began its life as a flour mill, then it was a brewery for 40 years, before being purchased by a local farming family who owned it for more than 80 years.

“There was a rickety old ladder to climb down into the brewery’s cellar, which was overgrown with box thorns and we found dead sheep. Then we walked through an archway into another space, where the mystery and adventure captured our imaginations,” says Dale.

“From the road, everybody admires the old mill tower, but there’s a whole cellar network downstairs. We realised there was something here where we could create an amazing space.”

Jacka Brothers now offers its own beer, brewed on the Yorke Peninsula, as well as local wine and spirits, with two wood-fired outdoor kitchens: a pizza oven and a “Mid North Grill” operated by local food vendors. The two kitchens are needed when the brewery is alive with up to 300 people on the town’s biggest weekends. This will be true for the upcoming Melrose Fat Tyre Festival, which runs from June 7 to 10.

“We did seriously look at brewing on site. With the heritage building, it just didn’t stand up economically, so we have somebody else make the beer for us, with integrity around our own recipes. We also showcase other great regional South Australian breweries and distilleries,” says Dale.

The property has many different spaces that have been completely transformed. The flour mill is now a bar, the old barrel hall and underground cellar is a wedding venue, while the shearing shed has been transformed into a luxurious four-bedroom guesthouse.

The final piece of the puzzle has been the recent opening of two luxury Remarkable Mountain Lodges, with four more still to come. The high-end lodges have stunning views to the mountains and ceiling windows that allow visitors to see the stars from the bedroom. “Our drive is around saving heritage, creating a space that people love and enjoy, and I think we’ve achieved it,” says Dale.

Michelle explains: “There was one particular moment when we stepped back to soak it in. Lots of good food was going out, the weather was great, and we had a couple of hundred people here with lots of families – the image that we had originally was finally playing out.”

There’s still more to come with a dining lounge and a commercial kitchen to be installed at the taphouse. But, in a small town like Melrose, businesses must work together to help one another, and provide complementary offerings.

Michelle believes they have struck the right balance and forged great relationships. “It’s lovely to see people enjoying the space and that it’s doing a lot for the whole town,” she says. “That is really satisfying.”

 

L’Anse French Cafe & Croissanterie
Port Lincoln, Eyre Peninsula

When you ask Eyre Peninsula locals about L’Anse French Cafe & Croissanterie in Port Lincoln, nobody knows for sure how to pronounce it.

What they do know, however, is how good the food is.

Owners Marvin and Grace Lattrez make a great team – Marvin is a highly talented chef who has cooked for a French president and Grace has a background in supply chain management, and an MBA.

Marvin, from the rural town Brive in France’s southwest, trained with Michelin Star chefs after culinary school and worked for former president Jacques Chirac for three years.

“I was delivering food to the President’s home, and he knew me quite well by name,” Marvin says.

There was a lot of world travel and cooking, but Marvin eventually moved to the Congo, where he met Grace.

Three years later, in 2015, the couple moved to Melbourne for Grace’s study and found a business listed on Gumtree in Tumby Bay – “It was pretty much for free,” Marvin says.

“It was a non-existing business, but all the equipment of the restaurant was in there already – it was quite significant.

“We’d have to come up just with a lease term, which was something like $400 a week plus GST, which was ridiculous compared with what we had in Melbourne. It was just too good to be true.”

Eventually, the couple shut up shop in Tumby Bay and after Covid hit moved to Port Lincoln. Around this time, visitor activity reached a peak because everyone was travelling within the state due to border closures elsewhere.

“Suddenly, people started discovering the Eyre Peninsula and we had a massive influx of tourists from Adelaide,” Marvin says.

“We couldn’t keep up; our activity went up 50 per cent but we couldn’t access the staff and we couldn’t capitalise.

“We had to shut the shop for four days in order to prep to serve customers for three days. It was so intense, Grace was pregnant (with daughter Amalia) and really struggling and we decided we couldn’t continue to do that. And we didn’t want to lower the standard.

“Of course, we miss Tumby Bay, it was a great little venture, but for us personally, and for our lifestyle, it was just way too difficult. The rest is history. We never really thought at the beginning that it would become what it is now.”

When you walk into L’Anse and look to your right, a window provides a view to the pastry chefs working their magic.

It’s truly a destination for tourists and locals alike. There’s a rather spectacular full menu available, but the croissants are simply legendary.

Marvin and the team work with sourdough. “Other techniques just don’t give you the complexity and depth of flavour that the sourdough fermentation process gives you,” he says.

“I love the rusticity of it. A good croissant must be flaky, smooth and moist inside, and it needs to have flavour.”

 

Mount Burr General Store
Limestone Coast

About 50 kilometres outside of Mount Gambier, the little forestry town of Mount Burr is a world away from where George Copelin grew up.

The 69-year-old spent his youth in Liberty City, Florida – the “rough part of town”, according to George.

The neighbourhood is one of the poorest in Florida and George says crime and drugs were rife.

Despite it being home, George always felt like an outsider, more into model rocket building, astronomy and wildlife than the culture he was surrounded by.

He found his way out through the Air Force, becoming an air traffic controller, and later a forest ranger patrolling the Everglades.

“It was an eye-opening experience for me,” George says. “It showed me there’s something outside of the ghetto.”

Then, 12 years ago, he met Rosie online, which led to her visiting him in the US, and him coming here to Australia.

Rosie was living in Mount Gambier and eight years ago, he moved to South Australia full time.

“I loved it. I only knew there were kangaroos and boomerangs. To me, Australia was just a place on the map; I never thought I would wind up here.

“I love the vastness of the country.”

George was 62 when he moved to Mount Gambier and he found it difficult to get a job, then one day, Rosie told him she’d driven past a shop for sale in Mount Burr.

“I said ‘What’s a Mount Burr?’.”

The shop had gone through a series of owners, without a lot of success and so George and Rosie decided to put their own flavour on it.

Now, right there in the middle of that forestry town, locals and visitors can experience real American cuisine. They sell burgers, buffalo chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, as well as packaged American snacks.

By far, the most popular order is sliders – George says people buy a dozen at a time. The couple has even hosted sold-out events for Fourth of July and Thanksgiving.

As George stands behind the counter, reflecting on life in Australia, several customers flow in and out and their general store keeper welcomes them all with friendly conversation.

“Life has calmed down now – I don’t hit the deck every time I hear a car backfire.”

 

The Standpipe Golf Motor Inn
Port Augusta, gateway to the Far North

Pick any weeknight to visit Port Augusta’s Standpipe restaurant during the cooler months and you’ll be surprised to find the hotel’s 150-seat restaurant bustling with locals, grey nomads, construction workers and more, all drawn in by the hotel’s longstanding reputation for excellent North Indian cuisine.

With a menu that is 75 per cent Indian, from house-made tandoori chicken to beef korma and Flinders Ranges goat bakra curry, it’s certainly a pleasant surprise. The most popular dish is butter chicken, “Northern India’s biggest export to the world”.

It mightn’t be what you’d expect, but neither are the hotel’s owners, Dr Devinder Singh Grewal and Surinder Kaur Grewal.

Honoured at NAIDOC week as the Unsung Hero, and by the Port Augusta City Council as the Citizen of the Year for 2024, Devinder was recently awarded for more than 50 years dedication to rural General Practice by Rural Doctors Workforce Agency. Country doctor Devinder has consulted to numerous generations of patients throughout the region, from a time when the town doctor did everything from minor surgeries to delivering babies.

Initially working as a microbiologist and lecturer, Devinder migrated to Australia in the early 1970s and moved to Quorn, joined shortly after by Surinder, who was pregnant with their first child. The couple then moved to Port Augusta in 1975.

One night in 1983, Devinder wanted to take his wife and three children to dinner at The Standpipe, a short walk from their home. “It was the only place that used to have dinner until 7.30pm. I phoned them to book, but that night they said they had fallen on tough times and were closing the business,” he recalls.

“We ended up buying it a few months later and I found myself working behind the bar. The only experience I had was being on the good side of the bar,” laughs Devinder.

While continuing his work as a doctor, Devinder was assisted by his wife and his brothers and sisters to run the business. The Standpipe introduced a weekly curry night, which was well received, and over the ensuing years, the hotel’s chefs continued to refine a menu that reflected Devinder and Surinder’s Punjab origins.

“There were Indian restaurants in Adelaide, but not in country areas, and definitely not in Port Augusta. We’ve now been at the game for about 41 years focusing on Indian cuisine. We’ve built up a reputation for an enjoyable meal, and we’re proud of our continued improvement,” says Devinder.

“The preparation is done on-site, I would not try and tell you how they do it, as boiling an egg is the extent of my cooking ability. We now have several chefs who take new chefs under their wing.”

With help from the couple’s extended family, The Standpipe has been renovated and expanded over the past 40 years. The motel offering has grown from 15 rooms to 87, while the restaurant has been expanded to seat about 150 guests.

Surinder was hands-on at the restaurant before the couple’s daughter Rupinder, one of their three children, took the reins for about 20 years. Sadly, Rupinder passed away in 2016 at the age of 44. Since then, the couple’s daughter Harkiran and son Deepinder have stepped in to assist their parents in running The Standpipe.

“It was very unfortunate, but we are very proud of the business that she (Rupinder) left for us. As the saying goes, ‘success is planting trees whose shade shall be enjoyed by future generations’,” says Devinder.

Renowned for unwavering dedication to his patients in remote South Australia, Devinder has no plans to stop serving his community. “We are proud to be supporting anything and everything in the rural areas, especially in our neck of the woods because the community of Port Augusta and surrounds are just so fabulous and supportive of anybody who’s prepared to give it a go and work hard,” he says.

“We’ve been very blessed.”

 

One Scoop or Two
Coffin Bay, Eyre Peninsula

Mel van Deventer and Bill Lemon have managed to find themselves in one of the most beautiful places in the world with half of the year to enjoy travel and life, and the other half working in an ice cream truck.

Four years ago, the couple were living a busy life in Adelaide – Bill ran a concreting business and Mel worked in a demanding role in publicity, marketing and events.

When Covid hit, work for Mel dried up and concreting was becoming hard on Bill, so they resolved to move full-time to Coffin Bay, where they had a holiday home, with the view to take on part time jobs. But inspiration intervened one New Year’s Day.

As Mel tells the story, she was rather hungover and craving ice cream. The problem was, she couldn’t find a proper ice cream cone in Coffin Bay.

Her desperation for a cold sweet treat soon turned to innovation and knowing there’s limited retail space in the town, they looked into mobile options, first buying a bike with an ice cream freezer and then a larger trailer when they realised the terrain called for it.

It’s with this trailer that they’ve pulled into the car park of Coffin Bay’s pristine Long Beach to chat with SALIFE. This is now their office.

The pair moved to Coffin Bay from Brompton, where they lived around the corner from the Gelista factory. A partnership with the ice cream brand was an obvious move, so they now get the ice cream sent to the Eyre Peninsula to sell.

The couple were careful when starting the business not to step on any toes, being outsiders.

“We asked our Coffin Bay born-and-bred neighbours if they thought anyone in town would have a problem, but they said it would be great,” Mel says.

“Everyone has been lovely – even the IGA have told us that if we run out of room, we can store ice cream in their freezer for free. That wouldn’t happen anywhere else.”

Their work is seasonal – they’ll start around the end of September and wrap things up around the end of April, although if there are bigger events in the region, they’ll open for those.

The rest of the year, they relax, travel and recuperate from the busy summer season, which sees them selling easily 300 ice creams a day.

“Neither of us ever thought we would own an ice cream business in our 50s but we absolutely love what we do.

“It’s been an incredible way to meet the locals and we love chatting with the tourists on where to explore and hear of their travels around Oz. We’re like a mobile tourist information centre.”

 

This article first appeared in the June 2024 issue of SALIFE magazine.