Take me to the Prom
Victorians like to keep a few secrets up their collective sleeve. While several million visitors head to Phillip Island every year, either to see the nightly spectacle of the penguin parade or for the annual blast of the Motorcycle Grand Prix, an extraordinarily high percentage of them — almost three quarters — live in Victoria. And, remarkably, few venture just a little further afield to explore South Gippsland. Even the jewel in the region’s crown, Victoria’s largest coastal wilderness area Wilsons Promontory, records 70 per cent of its annual half a million visitors from within the state.
These facts remain a source of bewilderment to anyone who has visited this extraordinary pocket of paradise, with its gateway just one-and-a-half-hours’ drive from Melbourne. It’s also bemusing to locals including Sandra Gawn, proprietor of Olive at Loch, a popular cafe, gift and homewares store in the heart of the village of Loch on the western side of the region. “It’s just 18 kilometres along the South Gippsland Highway from the turn off from the Bass Highway to Phillip Island, yet few people make the detour,” she says. “The amazing thing is the island gets so busy in summer and there’s so much more to see and do within easy day-tripping distance.”
The “Olive” in Olive at Loch is the Gawns’ retro Kombi van, and Sandra explains that Olive found Loch, when she
