Snail-like pace allows a restful holiday at Queenscliff

Press, 7 April 1987, Page 26

Snail-like pace allows a restful holiday at Queenscliff

By

SUSAN KUROSAWA

If you’re weary of brash beachgoers, gaudy seaside hotels, miles of concrete esplanade and more spruiking food-vendors than you could poke a hot dog at, then the Australian seaside town of Queenscliff could well be the holiday place for you. The calm, rather prim atmosphere of this pretty, pine-studded getaway spot immediately evokes a more genteel, less hurried age. A time of modest neck-to-knees, private bathing huts on the beach, smart soirees in tweezered gardens and. band recitals in the baize-green park. Situated on the eastern tip of Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula at Port Phillip Heads, Queenscliff can be reached in an easy 90 minutes drive from Melbourne via Geelong. Its history stretches back to the 1840 s when it was established as a fishing village,* today it is still an important supplier of seafood for the Melbourne market. A sea pilot service was established in Queenscliff in 1838 to steer ships through Port Phillip’s treacherous stretches of sandbank to Melbourne. The first lighthouse was built in 1842, and in 1853 Lieutenant Governor Latrobe named the area Queenscliff in honour of Queen Victoria. It was to become an important garrison town and defence post for the fledgling colony and by the 1880 s, Queenscliff Fortress was the most heavily armed in the Southern Hemisphere. A Russian invasion was feared but of course the Soviets never came. However, a shot was fired as a warning volley against a German merchant ship and historians claim that blast was the first of World War One. Queenscliff was to be invaded by throngs of fashionable Melburnians rather than enemy 'warships. Wellheeled holidaymakers would arrive by rail or steamer and put up in huge guesthouses with formal furnishings, sumptuous ballrooms, spiffing food and big views across the cypressfringed bay. Two outstanding examples of this holiday hotel genre still function as elegant guesthouses. Mietta’s Queenscliff Hotel caters for an adults-only clientele while Vue Grand is pitched at the family market. The former establishment is run with swags of style by Patricia O’Donnell, sister of Mietta of the Melbourne restaurant of that name. It’s a wonderful ramble of a place featuring snug upstairs guestrooms, several antique-infested lounges, a lofty-ceilinged dining room, chatty bar and courtyard eating area complete with marble-topped tables from Singapore’s Raffles Hotel. Mietta’s food is of exceptional quality and formal dinners are partnered by a dizzy array of pre-selected wines. You immediately feel like donning a floaty white gown or wing-collar and tails to compete with the palpably romantic feel of the place. Week-end packages at Mietta’s Queenscliff Hotel are priced at $217 per person and include accommodation on Friday and Saturday nights, dinner on Friday night in the courtyard restaurant, dinner on Saturday night in the formal dining room (plus selected wines), lunch on Sunday, and -breakfast on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The Vue Grand, located a block from the bay, has a very relaxed atmosphere despite its fusty decor of stained glass, tiled Victorian floors, sweeping staircases and a cavernous dining room that could happily double

as a town hall. There’s a large indbor pool and spa and spacious Conference facilities. Owners Mark and Vicky Lynch have lavishly restored the hotel to its original 19th century glory but those all-important mod cons are well in evidence. You can put up for the week-end at Vue Grand for $lBO per person including accommodation on Friday and Saturday nights, full choice of the restaurant menu on both nights, carvery lunch on Sunday, and breakfast on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Either hotel makes a civilised base from which to explore Queenscliffs charming streetscapes. Most buildings have been tastefully restored and featured wide wooden veranda and lots of frilly ironwork. There are wellpriced antique shops, cute tea parlobrs and good craft galleries, several of which are housed in quaint old churches. A stroll through the town’s residential streets soon turns into an impromptu lesson in early Australian architecture. Trim Victorian-style houses display intricate balconies and ornate trimmings while pert Federation cottages sport fancy wooden fretwork and windows etched with colourful kookaburras, waratafts and assorted Aussie bush babies. As all camping at Queenscliff is away from the beachfront, there are big expanses of open parkland along the bay where picnickers lounge under wide cypresses and daytrippers stroll along to the wooden pier to board ferries bound for Melbourne Portsea on the Momington Peninsula. This deepwater jetty was built in 1884 and is considered one of Australia’s best examples of traditional pier architecture. You’ll always find fisherman trying their luck from this wooden perch and it’s perfect territory for a slow sunset stroll.

Queenscliff has a golf course, a maritime reserve featuring the remnants of vessels that once sailed in local waters, and an historical centre where maps, drawings, photographs, relics and various memorabilia of the town are displayed. Steam locomotive trips are operated on weekends and public holidays by a local society; the crusty old puffers depart from the century-old railway station and chug on a 16km run around Swan Bay and over the Bellarine Hills to Drysdale. Guided tours of Fort Queenscliff are conducted on week-ends and public holidays; the excursion takes in Australia’s only black lighthouse, a military museum, cannon and underground shell magazine. Queenscliffs neighbouring resort town of Point Lonsdale makes for an easy side-trip to take in cliff-top walks, a lighthouse built at the turn of the century, an historic cemetery and good ocean beaches. And it’s an easy drive to Victoria’s famed Great Ocean Road and the popular surfing towns, Torquay and Bell’s Beach.

The idea, though, is to stay put in Queenscliff and savour the snail-like pace of a bygone era. An old handbook I came across described Queenscliff as a perfect watering place. “Those who frequent it,” it stated, "linger by the seductive whispering of its cerulean waves, and enjoy zealously the best of all holidays to the wearied man — absolute rest” That was written in 1876. It’s nice to know not much has changed since in Queenscliff.