Daylesford

D & I left a bit late for our trip to Daylesford. We made it to our bed & breakfast to drop off our bags with barely a minute to spare. Our dinner reservation at the acclaimed Lake House restaurant was now; but, it’s dark, we can’t get in and no one is around. We decide to ask a neighbor in a nearby café; nothing. Then we hit the neighboring hotel. Alas, someone comes to the rescue! Our hero at last finds a phone number and we make contact with the owners. He gives us the key box code and we get inside. It was too late to make our dinner reservation so we order take-away pizza and eat in instead. It’s tasty.

Saturday we head out to discover Daylesford and Hepburn Springs. The town centres are a minute or two apart by car. We feel something funny going on beneath us. We pull over and I lean out of the door; a flat tire. In thirty-two minutes D had the tire changed. The switch would have been much quicker if the car came with the right size socket wrench. We had to be rescued once again.

We head off to discover Daylesford and Hepburn Srpings, again. The main street in Daylesford offers a few restaurants, a handmade chocolate shop and D’s favorite, the ‘Avant-Garden Bookshop’. Hepburn Springs offers a little less; though spas are in every nook and cranny. We visit Lavandula, a lavender farm five minutes down the road. The shop is full of nick-nacks, soaps, lotions, sprays and tonics, all containing one shared ingredient. We buy nothing and refuse to pay the $3.50 to tour the farm. It looks pretty from the fence but we feel it’s not worth the price tag.

Since we were in ‘spa country’ we decide to indulge like all tourists who come to the area do. The Hepburn Springs Spa is our wellness retreat of choice and we book in for mineral baths and mud and algae wraps; we couldn’t wait!

On the Sunday we arrive at the spa and are greeted by a young Indian male and a middle-aged, balding and overweight man named Alan. Maybe we were wrong in thinking they would be manicured beautiful women, the kind of person you’d expect to ‘wrap’ you at a renowned spa. We looked at each other in disbelief; surely they must be taking us to our therapists. Nope. Though the wraps were pleasant and our therapists were professional it was hard to fully relax; though after seeing some of the other ‘beauty’ therapists at Hepburn Springs I think we had the best of the bunch.

Our favorite character at The Hepburn Springs Spa was the driver, Ian. Ian has worked at the spa for forty years driving back and forth 300 metres, dropping guests off between the reception and the bathhouse. He told us about a few of his most famous guests, the president of East Timor being one, and snickered telling us about the football players that often came for facials. For working there he is allowed a free massage every day, though he has yet to have one for fear he ‘might need them everyday if he has one’. An interesting fellow I hope to meet again on my next visit to Spa Country.