Top House

We visited this beautiful old hotel (and ex pob) after we'd canoed around one of the lakes near St Arnaud. It's open to the public but it's basically a family's house and they let you come in and look around and make you lunch/tea etc. We had lunch there and then had a Devon cream tea for desert - minus clotted cream - almost like being back in the UK. The place is very like an old English country house, but with even better views.

The place has a troublesome history with one guy in the 1890s killing two men and then trying to kill a woman who managed to call for help to Nelson via a Morse code message (no phones in those days). When help came the next day the murdered had turned the gun on himself, in this building. The place had all sorts of old paper cuttings etc to do with the crime...