Kangaroo Hotel

Since 1856 there has been a Kangaroo Hotel on this corner of High and Fountain streets in Maldon, a bluestone-and-brick building that has done service over the years as a Cobb & Co changing station, a butcher's shop and, at one point, the town morgue. Maldon's standing as one of Victoria's best-preserved nineteenth-century towns means the building has barely changed, even as the kitchen has: the current menu draws on produce and meat from the surrounding goldfields country, served through a recently refreshed dining room and a beer garden that fills on weekends. The pub has been offered for sale in recent years, but the doors remain open under current management, drawing locals, rail-trail cyclists and day-trippers up from Castlemaine for a counter lunch. Maldon's High Street is one of the most intact nineteenth-century streetscapes in the state, and the Kangaroo sits right in the middle of it.