Picnic PointFarm

A family orchard on the banks of the Mitchell River, worked on the western edge of Bairnsdale, sells direct from a shed at the farm gate. Apples are the mainstay, eaten fresh and pressed into juice and other apple products, but the shed's shelves shift with the seasons, taking in cherries, raspberries, asparagus and rhubarb as each comes on. Buying here means buying at the source, from the people who grew it, a few hundred metres from the trees. It is a modest, unshowy operation of the kind that increasingly gets designed out of regional towns, and a reminder that East Gippsland's food bowl starts with growers like this rather than with restaurants.