ANYONE WHO HAS EVER DRIVEN along the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne is likely to have stopped in Gundagai: a classic country town on the Murrumbidgee River with a name so immortalised in folk song that it’s almost impossible to say without a musical lilt. You’ll have topped up on fuel and had a pub lunch at the Criterion Hotel or perhaps a meal and a milkshake at the iconic Niagara Cafe: until recently the oldest continuously Greek-run cafe in Australia, with its Art Deco elements and long history of venerable patrons (it’s where then prime minister John Curtin famously had a midnight meal of steak and eggs with his war cabinet in 1942). And you’ll have posed for a photo with the Dog on the Tucker Box – a historical monument, tourist attraction and fundraiser, via its wishing well, for Gundagai Hospital since 1932.
But as we drive through town today it’s for more than just a pit stop – and there’s something different in the air. The undulating Riverina landscape that wraps around
