A recreational fishing guide highlighting fishing opportunities in and around the historic towns of Indigo Shire has been produced in time for the summer holidays.

The Victoria Hotel have come up with a truly unique idea for lighting up the beer garden this Christmas. ‘Mrs Brown’s Flying Christmas Bicycles’ are stopping all sorts of traffic in the Rutherglen Main Street since going up last week.  

Owner Sarah Morris says, “The hotel is right near the Murray to Mountains trail. At the hotel we offer packages for the bicycle holiday and an award winning concierge service.” Sarah continues, “This is a huge building to decorate for Christmas as you can imagine! We really wanted to have some fun using bikes for our Christmas theme and create some truly memorable Christmas lights as we are putting on a number of events over Christmas and into the New Year. We put the word out around Rutherglen that we were looking for some quirky vintage bicycles – and they came rolling in! We wanted to create a talking point for guests and Rutherglen residents and I think we have achieved that – all we need is ET sitting in the basket! Kids and grown-ups alike seem to love Mrs Brown’s Flying Christmas Bicycles; stopping to look, point, talk and even take photos of them!”

The beauty of the Wahgunyah Rutherglen leg of the Murray to Mountains bike trail is that it offers relaxed riding with great rewards. Access to local wineries, idyllic landscapes and the Murray River are all within easy riding distance. The Victoria Hotel offers accommodation packages for cyclists including the hugely successful ‘Boobs, Bikes and Bubbles’ and the newly developed 'Tweed Ride' See the website for more information.

Hotel owners Sean and Sarah Morris will fire up the Rutherglen dining scene when local chef Gavin Swalwell joins the Victoria Hotel team at the end of November. 

Sean welcomes the new recruit for his kitchen team. He says, “Sarah and I have spent many years working through our business plan of renovating and updating the hotel. Implementing our plans on a heritage building this size and age has been no mean feat, I can assure you! Our vision of updating the bar and dining areas culminated in ‘Mrs Brown’ opening recently which has been a wonderful success. Happily, we now find ourselves ready to take the next step in our plan for the hotel and have recruited new chef Gavin Swalwell accordingly.”

“Gavin is a chef with a resume almost as impressive as mine!” laughs Sean, “We have both worked at the Regent in Melbourne and Gavin has been in the Rutherglen area for a number of years. He is a great operator, he knows the local dining market and what works.