Farmers Wife Distillery Breakfast Club Run
03 December 2023 / Story John Purcell, Photos by David Gazzard and John Purcell
Click here to see all the photos and drone footage
It all started with the idea to have a breakfast meet at a Gin Distillery on the Bucketts Way. Gin for breakfast you say, well not quite. Breakfast was organised by Les for 8:30am and with the Distillery being 14km’s along the Bucketts Way from the Pacific Hwy the general consensus was to make your own way there with many of our members doing exactly that.
There is always someone who wants to do something different so John organised a run from Maitland to the event and a run home from the event with a surprising number of members deciding to take that option as well despite the earlier start. Six cars joined John and Chris leading the way in ”Cal”, their new/old mango NC”, with a total of 11 members following some very quiet Saturday morning roads though Morpeth to Clarencetown then along Limeburner’s Creek Road. Turning onto the Bucketts Way, the group was split by Phil in his newly ‘rewrapped’ NC (no, not a Xmas present) before ending up at the Farmer’s Wife to meet up with the large group of members waiting for the restaurant to open.
Kylie, the ‘farmer’s wife’ decided to try her hand at making gin back in 2019 using product from their farm, coming 2nd in a prestigious world gin competition in England on her first try. Her farm shed quickly became too small so she and her husband invested in a property on the Bucketts Way and created a purpose-built distillery along with a large barn-like restaurant / tasting area. Along with their gin they serve up wonderful food and mentioning food yes, they also do great breakfast dishes.
Where was I? A large group of members, yes, 31 in 18 beautiful MX5s came together for breakfast. Our group had the restaurant to ourselves giving us a chance to sample a tasty selection of breakfast treats along with great company, especially as we were able to catch up with some of our foundation members that we hadn’t seen in quite a while. Two visitors, Peter & Leonie, who we had met on a previous jaunt up to Forster joined us as well as our chapter’s newest member Penny Tracey accompanied by her friend Naomi.
Two hours later, after a good gossip, gin sampling and checking out the gift shop it was time to head home. Eight cars and their passengers decided to head straight home with the other 10 cars heading home home via Stroud. The route took the group to Stroud then across to Dungog before heading home through Paterson and yes, I said Dungog, noted for the worst roads in the state without a doubt. Stroud Hill Road is the best example of bad roads you can find anywhere in NSW. It starts by sucking you in with a good surface for the first 8 km’s before degenerating into a road surface made up of one filled pothole joined directly to another all the way to Dungog. I consider this to be a great MX5 road with tight, twisty sections along the side of a ridge ONLY to be destroyed by the fact that you are lucky to do 60km/hr without destroying your car’s suspension. Ok, complaints aside, once past Dungog it was back on far better surfaces where we all enjoyed the cruisier run though to Paterson and on to Maitland, where the group radioed their farewells and broke up to go home.
Many thanks to Les for organising the breakfast and if you read this, it is well worth dropping in to the Farmer’s Wife if you are ever up that way.
