Daylesford - Spa Capital of Australia

The walk around is known as the Peace Mile - it takes 20 minutes if you don't stop for endless photographs or to sketch the boats or to dangle the feet from the jetty or to feed the ducks or to sample the mineral water any of the 5 pumps or to just lie on the grass with your best friend and ask why you can't live here forever

You are walking or driving around a narrow pathway - the top of a 50,000 yrs old volcano, staring on your right at botannical gardens laoid down by the legendary Baron Von Mueller in the 1860s and looking forever on the left out oover the prettiest of villages towards distant hills, across endless forest or green, green potato fields, or lines of grape vines - and feeling deja vu - as so many films have stolen these views for posterity. It is indeed a natural film set

Originally the Gold commissioners House, then a school for Girls under the Presentation nuns, then since the late 1980s a wonderful home of art and jewellery. The chapel remains and allows its community to host drama, music and quiet reverie within its heart. The nun's cell is in tact and reminds of unnerving dedication to the education of children. The gardens need to have lovers running and hiding. And of course, the wine bar (the "Altar Bar") where one has top sit and quietly sip cool climate wines and watch the diminishing Western sunset