Hahndorf (Strathalbyn Part 2)

We actually made two trips to Hahndorf and so it gets its own blog post. The main reason we visited twice was there were so many shops we wanted to look in, and a 2yo gets "over it" very quickly, so we couldn't see all the shops we were interested in the first day.

Hahndorf is interesting (I seem to say that about a lot of places I mention, but let me explain why...).

Firstly a bit of history - the town was first settled by people primarily from Prussia in 1838, and much of that Germanic heritage is still prevalent and obvious today. It is the oldest surviving German town in Australia. There are beautiful old buildings dating from around the mid 1800s and many have a German influence.


So why interesting???? Well, the very first shop we saw when we got out of our car was a Nepalese restaurant. While the town has quite a few old buildings, and many of the newer ones remain true to either an historic or a German theme, the old is interspersed with the new in a slightly jarring way. Many of the shops cater specifically to the tourist market, which means overpriced and/or cheap stuff made in China that is Australian themed and therefore overpriced. Having said that, there are also shops that do have a genuine authenticity about them and these are what make it a town worth visiting.

We enjoyed strolling through various gift shops, (supposedly) traditional German shops, cuckoo clock shops and checking out the menus at the various pubs and cafes. One of the shops we really enjoyed was a gem and mineral shop (not the opal one). They had a wide range of gemstones and precious stones to look at and buy. They had ones from not just Australia, but throughout the world which was pretty cool as we are unlikely to travel overseas to see some of these gemstones. Tilda was fascinated by some of the crystal specimens they had and I think we all learned a lot. I had a good chat with the lady working there who gave me some good advice for the Jupiter Creek Gold Diggings (like watch out for the deep shafts and never let Rory roam off the path). We bought some small polished stones from there - obviously ones not worth anything but Tilda and I chose them based on how much we liked them. The lady's father then told us what we had chosen, which included a smokey quartz, a garnet, an agate from the Mediterranean, two blue chalcedony and one we didn't get the name of.

We also enjoyed some authentic German meals. We had schnitzels at the Copenhagen, which were OK, and a very delicious meal of Bratwurst, German potato salad and red cabbage, followed by apple strudel, at The German Bakery. I definitely recommend this cafe as a place to eat. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was lovely too. The cafe was full of decorative plates, cuckoo clocks and beer steins which provided a feast for the eyes (and a distraction for the kids) to complement the food and atmosphere. Despite being quite busy (it was pouring so tourists were flocking to inside the shops), it wasn't too noisy to hold a conversation and was lovely and warm.