How a sheepdog saved an Australian town

Casterton and the kelpies are now inseparable, and the money generated by auctions and fairs has helped the community no end. But did the town need saving? The location is wonderful, an asset all its own: tucked into a rich valley on the Glenelg river, halfway between Adelaide and Melbourne, it is a perfect place to stop while exploring the glorious landscapes of western Victoria. To the west of Casterton are the winelands of Coonawarra, Australia’s Bordeaux, while a couple of hours south east is the start of the Great Ocean Road. 

It is a place that has long drawn people from across the world. In the late 1950s – in the middle of the post-war wool boom – another young Scot moved here from Edinburgh. He later told his daughter that moving to Casterton was like switching from black-and-white to Technicolor. In this land of plenty, there were big cars, milk bars and a town radio station.

He lived in Australia until his death in 2008. And now I am visiting Casterton with his daughter – who also happens to be my wife.

We check into the Albion, one of only two pubs in the area that are still trading. Fortunes have been mixed here: the town’s bank has gone and so have half the shops. The local newspaper soldiers on. Yet this is no ghost town: there is a constant stream of utes – “utility” pick-up trucks, another common symbol of rural Australia – usually with a kelpie or two on the back. And log trucks, too, ferrying timber back and forth. Acres of dead-straight blue gums have been grown since my wife left here in the 1980s. 

So, come here if you love dogs. Seeing a kelpie in action, especially when they are “backing”– scampering across the thick, woolly backs of the sheep – is a rare privilege. Come for this classic landscape of huge, silver-barked gums and distant, rippling creeks. Come for the cake at Herbert’s Bakery-Café. The names on the menus – Lamingtons, hedgehogs and vanilla slices – are enough to make any Australian dewy-eyed with nostalgia. 

You are not in any old hipsterville, however. This is a rare slice of authentic, rural Australia at its best – and there is nowhere else quite like it.

The road trip: Melbourne to Casterton and back

Begin your Western Victoria road trip in Melbourne, heading west with stops in the historic gold town of Ballarat or perhaps the reborn and very fashionable spa town of Daylesford.

Have a night in the Grampians National Park or carry on straight to Dunkeld – the renovated Royal Mail hotel (doubles from £205) has one the best wine lists in Victoria. The drive is part of the experience: an empty, straight road through some of the most fertile land in the continent. (But avoid driving at dusk, when the kangaroos start hopping about).