I was travelling with my good friend, Geoff. We were staying up in the Flinders Ranges. We needed a pharmacy – and Quorn was the nearest place. It was some 150km away, but that’s rural Australia when you need to get to the chemist.
Quorn is a traditional country town, built maybe 150 years ago. It lives off the fat of the land – a commodity, of course, which is diminishing. But Quorn still retains its air of privilege, along with a hard, almost harsh, country attitude to anything not ‘normal’… Old families that are 3-4 generations in, perhaps a lack of willingness to change, with a set of standards that could be stuck squarely in 1960s Australia.
Or so I thought.
We needed a coffee. The pickings were pretty slim – meat pie shop or the white bread bakery shop. But, Geoff’s keen eye caught sight of a place – Scruffy Fella, a coffee / beard product / cocktail bar / scented candle shop. (I know, right! In Quorn?)
This is what we walked into.
Nigel and his partner Henry came to 1960s Quorn 18 months ago from Melbourne. Not without some trepidation, they told me. How would Quorn adapt its 1960s, harsh country values to accept these blow-ins??
Well, as it turned out, Quorn adapted very well. Nigel apparently makes a serious retro cocktail. They have a range of craft beers. Locals can tame their scruffy fella (aka beard) with many of the beard grooming products Nigel manufactures. For the enlightened Quorn local, there are even scented candles to bring down the mood.
Nigel and Henry don’t just come as a couple. They have a couple of fur babies. The have Harry the Sheepadoodle – old English sheep dog/poodle cross (and really, how can that work?), and Willie the Bordoodle.
This is Harry.
It was very unexpected… to find a little swanky Melbourne cocktail bar selling high end beard grooming products and scented candles, with a dog that helps at the counter, and two wonderful men who single handedly may have hauled 1960s Quorn into the 21st century. It was such a pleasure to meet them both.
It made me happy of the Australia we are becoming.