Down to Earth
A nineteenth-century shearing shed, a regenerative farm and a chef who wastes nothing. In 2027, The Ghan’s new northbound itinerary begins with a signature dinner in the Clare Valley – and it begins extraordinarily well.
WORDS Christine McCabe
The southern capital, Adelaide (Tarntanya), is fringed by world-renowned wine regions, none lovelier than the Clare Valley (Ngadjuri Country), where undulating hills shelter terraced vines and sun-kissed villages built of stone. It’s quieter than its siblings, closer to town, the Barossa and McLaren Vale. And life seems to move at a more leisurely pace.
A place Ghan travellers will soon get to know. Much of the charm of this legendary train is the chance to slow down, to gaze out the window as Australia’s vast cinematic landscapes unfurl or curl up with a good book as the star-filled night skies drift by. But in 2027, the journey begins before any of that. Before the red earth, before the desert skies, before the train even leaves South Australia (Kaurna), it begins around a fire in the Clare Valley, with a dinner designed to set the tone for everything that follows.
With an extra night added to the northbound journey, the 2027 itinerary takes its time with Australia in a way that changes what you see. A full day in the Flinders Ranges (Ikara-Flinders Ranges), an ancient landscape whose stories stretch back millions of years. Dawn at Marla, where the sky looks like it has reflected the ochre earth below your feet. Then north to Alice Springs, into the red heart of the Red Centre, through the winding waterways of Katherine and finally into Darwin. But before any of that, there is the Clare Valley, and two of South Australia’s most highly regarded food identities.
The first is Riesling. The Clare Valley produces some of the world’s finest, poured from quaint little cellar doors housed in all sorts of historic buildings, including an old railway station, a butter churn factory, and even a monastic enclave where the Jesuit brothers have been making wine since the mid-19th century.
The second, the food. Courtesy of Penobscot Restaurant in the Watervale Hotel, where executive chef Nicola Palmer showcases organic produce grown on a regenerative farm she runs with her husband, sommelier and bon vivant Warrick Duthy. The 10-seat chef’s table, last year named Australia’s best regional restaurant, is not large enough to cater to the Ghan’s 200-300 passengers – even with every table in the hotel filled, it would not be enough.
So Nicola and Warrick have come up with something even better. Ghan passengers will draw up a chair by the fire in a nineteenth-century shearing shed on their Penobscot Farm, just down the road from the pub.
When guests arrive, it will be to the comforting fragrance of freshly baked sourdough drifting from a wood oven. Bread made with wattle seed grown at the nearby Little Bunyip Farm and served with house-smoked butter. (Hot charcoal is immersed in cream for five days, the cream is strained and churned; a thoroughly delicious spread that sums up Nicola’s inventiveness and clever use of flame and smoke.)
Aperitifs and canapés will be enjoyed by the fire in the old shed or on the deck overlooking the astonishingly abundant organic and biodynamic farm. Everything you can imagine is grown here in an almost higgledy-piggledy fashion, following permaculture principles. There are cherries and red love apples, bee hives and finger limes, pecans planted between the pine trees and little yuzu trees, that most delicious citrus.
Jujubes (Chinese dates) and Pakistani mulberries nestle nearby to an 80-year-old pomegranate tree groaning beneath the weight of ruby-coloured fruit (plucked annually to flavour the house gin). An epic Carob tree, almost 200-years-old, forms its own forest, gnarled trunks tentacled in all directions.
At the top of the farm, an ancient quartz ridge offers a panoramic view of prime Clare real estate, the Watervale subregion. “The Clare’s grand cru,” says Warrick.
“Yet when we arrived in 2017, Penobscot had been overgrazed, the topsoils blown away, the springs dried up.”
Guided by Jared Murray (of Green Living Permaculture), compacted red clay and rampant caltrop (bindis) have given way to incredibly productive soil. Local Ngadjuri elder and healer Aunty Angelena Harradine has provided an ancient insight into the importance of the “little people”, or soil microbiome.
For the Ngadjuri, this is a place of birth and rebirth, the women’s camp of freshwater springs. The ridge is a powerful song line, and Mount Horrocks (visible from the farm), is the keeper of the spirit of grandmother lore.
The arrival of The Ghan represents an incredibly exciting opportunity for Nicola and Warrick, who will be catering to some 16,000 additional covers every year.
“It’s difficult to overestimate the train’s impact; it will change our lives completely,” says Nicola, “and will be a tremendous boost for the Clare Valley, but it means upscaling dramatically”.
The old shearing shed is currently being expanded and upgraded to feature an open kitchen, French-style wood-fired oven and huge central fireplace. However, none of the charm of the old shed, including the shearing stands and weathered sheep pens with ingenious circular gates, will be lost. The “new” addition will appear to have always been there, with the team busily collecting aged, corrugated iron from all over South Australia’s mid-north.
Young gun winemaker Andrew Kenny is upscaling Riesling production while Mount Horrocks Wines’ Stephanie Toole is doubling production of her acclaimed organic Cordon Cut Riesling dessert wine. It’s a tricky process where canes are cut, and grapes shrivel and concentrate on the vine to produce a sublime wine that will serve as the perfect finale to dinner.
Meanwhile, Cameron Bond, a young regenerative farmer from Skilly Hills, a couple of valleys over, will double lamb production (if you’re lucky, served with lamb fat potatoes). On Penobscot Farm, Jared is expanding the already enormous veg patch.
Nicola and Warrick’s philosophy of regenerative farming extends to the hotel kitchen, where an international team helps Nicola trial new recipes almost daily to use what is freshly picked. And not a skerrick is wasted.
Even impossible byproducts like those annoying strips of silk clinging to a corn cob are fashioned into a little nest, fried and dusted with salt (the dried cobs used as kindling in the pub’s log fires).
Oil is flavoured with onion stems, all sorts of seeds embellish vinegar, trout skin becomes a tasty crisp cradling house-made labneh, cured fish and Riesling jelly. The Ghan passengers can expect to tuck into the likes of house-made terrines and kangaroo sausages, pates and Quandong chutney, succulent chicken Ballantine and dainty seasonal fruit tarts cooked in the wood oven. (It would have been handy to have Nicola on board The Ghan ninety years ago when the train was stranded in the desert for a couple of weeks, and the driver was forced to shoot goats to feed passengers. She would have made a feast of those ferals.)
Meanwhile, Warrick’s encyclopaedic wine knowledge will be deployed with great verve as he introduces the Clare wines accompanying each course. His passion for the region and the Watervale Hotel’s history is infectious. Expect to be charmed.
Perched above the high street of the tiny Watervale village, Nicola and Warrick’s hotel dates from 1847 and in the early days earned a hard scrabble reputation for bare-knuckle fights. In 1868, indomitable licensee Esther Greenslade installed a drunk tank or jail (known as the ‘Hell Hole’). Local winemaker and Justice of the Peace Carl Sobels fined offenders according to their libation of choice: a pound for beer or whiskey, but only 10 shillings if patrons had become sozzled drinking local wine. A canny marketing ploy.
Nicola has transformed Esther’s jail into a handsome private dining room and the entire hotel into a charming collection of eating spaces decorated with art and antiques.
In recent years, the Clare-raised chef has forged a close relationship with Aunty Angelena. They talk almost every day. “Watervale chose Nicola and Warrick,” says Aunty Angelena, “they are here to help heal the land and take care of the little people; and Nicola’s role is to translate this healing into food.”
It’s a “soul contract” between a black and a white woman, she says, “a covenant”. According to Warrick, this contract extends back to pioneering publican Esther, who broke bread with the local Ngadjuri women in a gesture of respect.
Aunty Angelena believes The Ghan passengers will become part of the same story through the breaking of bread and sharing of food. “They will take the spirit of this place with them,” she says.
A very special welcome to the journey.
THE DETAILS
For over 95 years, The Ghan has been writing itself into Australian history. The Legendary Ghan is its newest chapter. Four days north from Adelaide to Darwin, beginning in the Clare Valley and winding through the Flinders Ranges, Marla, Alice Springs and Katherine before arriving in the tropical Top End. All-inclusive, unhurried and unlike any other rail adventure. Fares start from $4,190 per person, Gold Twin Everyday fare.