As many of you will know, earlier this year Victoria was in shock with the mass devastation of the bush fires. Known as Black Saturday, none of us will forget how we felt seeing images and the horror on the news. To follow up from a previous post, I took a drive out to Marysville, one of the affected areas to see how the community was coping, a few months on.

It was a great opportunity to support the local community and get out of town for a few hours. As you can see a lot of the trees were still black, but the amount of greenery emerging was just amazing. We saw lots of houses still at ground zero level which really brought us back to earth and realising what truly went on here just a few months ago.

In the main town, a shop front is still charred, whilst the main bakery still stands. I was glad the bakery was still around, because I remember visiting it a few years ago, and having a killer sausage roll!

Business is busier than ever, being pretty much the main place to grab a bite in town, other than the temporary marque restaurant set up across the road. We had to take a number and wait amongst the huge crowd to get served. It was worth it though because everything looked so good.

These photos only show a small portion of the size of this massive bakery. We luckily got a table outside to eat as it was a gorgeous Autumn day, raining quite heavily! I got my killer sausage roll, Nerdy Rob got a steak pie and our newest entourage member, Hamish got a steak and mushroom pie. We also got some wedges to share. Nothing beats country bakery pies and sausage rolls, although this time the sausage roll wasn't as nice as I remember it, however it was still pretty good! The wedges were nice and fresh, I wish we had gotten a bigger bag to share!

We headed back to Healesville to the White Rabbit brewery;
Rob and I heard about this place at the Good Food & Wine Show only a few days earlier. Being part of the Little Creatures group, we were very interested to check it out.
The brewery has the same kind of atmosphere the Fremantle Little Creatures brewery has. Laid back, beer vats, matching food and friendly service.

The beer is still in the trialing phase, so that is probably why you can only try it in Healesville at the moment. We were quite amused by the bill, coming in a Little Golden Book. I used to read these as a kid, it was a nice quirky touch that I would expect from a place like this!

Right next door is the famous, Beechworth Bakery:

Another huge, busy bakery, probably most famous for their vanilla slices, beestings and other goodies. The boys got vanilla slices and I got a "granny smith", which was basically an apple cake. The pastry was lovely, not too thick or thin, and not too sweet.

We ended the day trip with a look in the local chocolate boutique;

Kennedy & Wilson was very fancy, with fancy names we got a couple to try. We each got 2 but we found one was pretty good, and the other was pretty average. It was a bit hit and miss, but I did like the layout of the chocolate, it was like walking into Tiffany & Co for chocolate.

If you are in Victoria, it is well worth the trip. Lots of local produce still available and a great way to support those in need.