Café: Merino Cafe
Date: 11th June
Time: 1.30pm
Location: The main road, Gunning, NSW
Drink ordered: Cappuccino and toasted sandwich
Price: $3
Coffee rating: 4 cups (delicious, beautifully presented, bitter and full-bodied)
Service: Slow and countrified
Book: Book browsing
What’s on the menu: Sandwiches, quiches, tandoori focaccias and steak sandwiches
Why go: Just outside of Canberra in sheep country, very quaint high street to browse after enjoying your cuppa
Observations: Gunning, population 1,000 is smack bang in the middle of sheep country. We stopped here on our drive from Melbourne to Sydney. The café is on the main road, lined with old Victorian brick buildings – a courthouse, picture house converted into a bookshop, two cafes and a few antique stores. Lots of sheep imagery and a lazy feel.
The café has a display of shears on the wall, a wood beam ceiling and slow service. The coffee is good and you can browse the overpriced books near the entrance. The food looked good. My sandwich was on wholegrain type bread and worth the wait. Everything is quite expensive, not one of those backward country towns, but an upmarket place with organic products on the shelf and lots of hand made soap (etc).
As I sat eating my sandwich and drinking my coffee I thought, what the hell would you do with your days here? Probably read a lot of books (the little shop has a good selection) and sit at a café and watch the passing parade of bikies and tourists.
