[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] A [/dropcap]t some point in our lives, most of us reflect on whether what we do for a living makes us happy or if we need to take a deep breath and make a change.

For Loretta Riordan and her partner Phil Slessar, that point arrived just over three years ago when Loretta, who had a long career in hospitality, decided she no longer wanted to work for other people, but for herself.

Phil, who came from a background in electric motor repairs, was also ready for a new challenge and doing “something completely different”.

“I was moving from a job where you have very dirty hands, to one where they are very, very clean,” he said with a laugh, extending his fingers for effect.

Together, Loretta and Phil took the plunge and made an offer on a café in Kepler St, Warrnambool that they refurbished and reopened as Lozzar’s Lounge Cafe.

“I had been working ridiculously hard for other people for many years, but I never had the confidence to think that I could open my own place,” Loretta said.

“Finally, I reached the point where I realised that if I didn’t make a move, I would never do it and in the end it all happened very quickly.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] P [/dropcap]hil learned the art of being a barista and Loretta expanded her cooking skills to the point where she could make virtually all of the café’s menu range herself, single-handedly, and only source a few items from other suppliers. Front-of-house was taken care of by the very capable Bec Scholz, who just moved on to a new venture last week after three years at Lozzar’s.

The café has established a loyal following for its breakfast and lunch menu which includes sit-down-and-take-your-time items like french toast, homemade muesli, fruit and oat crumble (breakfast), smoked salmon, feta and pea frittata, or a smoked chicken, leek and roast pumpkin risotto (lunch), plus the full range of ‘grab-and-go’ bagels, focaccias, salads and soups.

The sweeter side of things includes a range of plump muffins (raspberry and white chocolate is the house specialty) and delicious cakes (such as blueberry and lemon sour cream cake) paired with one of a large selection of T2 teas that are served in a pot, or a coffee from the ethically responsible Di Bella roasters.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] W [/dropcap]hen it comes to a successful café, however, great food and coffee are only one part of the equation. Great service is equally as important and this is where Lozzar’s steps up.

“I want all of our customers to be noticed, and by that I mean, when they walk in, we say hello, we make sure they feel welcome and comfortable and really looked after,” Loretta said.

The Lozzar’s philosophy is reflected in the inspirational phrases added around the walls, which customers have been known to photograph.

“These sayings reflect my own thinking because I never thought I would ever have my own cafe.  It has been hard work, but when the place is buzzing, when our customers are telling us that the food is great, well, it makes your day. It makes it all worthwhile,” Loretta said.

[box type=”bio”] Lozzar’s Lounge Cafe, 52a Kepler St, Warrnambool. Open Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, Sat 9am-lunch. Ph: 55612823. Find them on Facebook here. [/box]

More stories about great cafes in South-West Victoria…

Dropping into one of the Wyton’s

Timboon Railway Shed Distillery

Rocksalt rocks on in Port Fairy

Lido lives up to expectations

Pick a Pickled Pelican

Silver serves coffee gold at Slitti, Port Fairy

Two Tarts a treat in Warrnambool

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A99E90;”] W [/dropcap]hen it comes to making a living, Brentan Doeven has chosen a path with a real sting in the tail.

Brentan, a tall, 25-year-old with a shaved head, Greg-Combet-style glasses and a heavy gold chain around his neck looks more like the sort of guy who would be serving short blacks in an inner-Melbourne café, but instead he makes his money from honey.

He finds it difficult to explain what drew him to beekeeping exactly, other than he simply likes bees.

“I found them fascinating. They are such simple yet complex creatures,” he said.

Brentan bought a single hive about four years ago and placed it on his parent’s farm at East Naringal, where he still lives, and taught himself the finer details of beekeeping by reading books about it.

“There is a lot more to it than meets the eye, actually,” he said.

“You have to learn how to check the boxes for diseases, how to keep the boxes in good condition and how bees operate.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A99E90;”] B [/dropcap]rentan has since expanded to 30 hives and pretty much knows all there is to know about bees, from how they don’t like getting caught in the rain, to how they choose their queen and which flowers produce the best honey.

In this, he has a distinct advantage, as his parents grow and sell cut flowers, so the property is awash with a huge variety of native plants and trees, plus numerous fruit trees that have also proven irresistible to his charges.

“Come late spring and summer, when everything is in flower, it can get pretty crazy here,” he says.

Brentan has also taught himself how to extract and bottle honey, using techniques that involve as little human intervention as possible.

He bought a hand-cranked extraction machine – which looks like a metal garbage can – from an old farmer and uses this to spin the honey out of the honeycomb.

The honey is then filtered with a hand-sieve that is held together by four bits of cane.

And that’s it.

The rich golden honey tastes superb – not too sweet, not too overpowering.

Of course there are drawbacks to working with bees, and we had to ask the obvious question, to which Brenton replied: “Yes!”

“Yes, I have been stung. Several times.

“Once I didn’t zip my suit up properly and a bee got in, then another and another, because once a bee stings, it lets off a pheromone that sets all the other bees off. I had to jump in the dam to stop them.”

[box type=”bio”] You can find Brentan (aka Brentan the Bee Man) at the Port Fairy Farmers’ Markets and Warrnambool Showground markets.[/box]

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DDCE8D;”] I [/dropcap]n an age of Kindles, tablets and iPads, there is something wonderfully romantic about binding, preserving and restoring old books.

Murray Simper is in the same league as cobblers, tailors, botanical artists, knife-sharpeners and fine furniture makers in that he sustains a dying art – or is it a craft –  that dates back centuries and is built on a philosophy of preservation and longevity, rather than the cheap and disposable.

It has been almost 30 years since Murray, who was born in Cobden and trained in Melbourne, opened his first antiquarian book binding business in the garage of his Warrnambool home. He later moved to a small shop next door to Ron Rauert’s shoe store, in Fairy St, and, most recently, into the former Fletcher Jones training room at 17E Lava St.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DDCE8D;”] T [/dropcap]he Harry-Potteresque sound of 17E is the perfect address for an antiquarian bookbinder and the two-roomed shop is exactly as you would hope it would be: full of teetering stacks of books, both fat and thin, their yellowed pages like sets of old teeth smiling from between their well-worn covers.

In the middle of all these words stands Murray, who resembles author Bill Bryson without the beard, and who talks in the quiet tones of somebody who is used to long hours of concentration.

“We get all sorts of books to be repaired. It might be a secondhand book that has been picked up at a market, not worth much, but it means something to the owner, or it might be a family Bible that has been in the family for generations,” he said.

Indeed perhaps the oldest book Murray has ever restored was a large Bible from 1525 that had a cover made of solid oak and, naturally, weighed a tonne.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DDCE8D;”] T [/dropcap]he restorations take place in the second of the two rooms, where an invisible line separates the 21st Century from the 19th.

One end of the workshop is dominated by a 130-year-old cast-iron guillotine that stands over a metre tall, was built by Chandler & Price of Cleveland, USA, and used for many years by the now defunct Port Fairy Gazette. Murray still uses it to trim book pages.

The other end houses wooden drawers full of metal typeset, also bought from the Port Fairy Gazette, and an assortment of gorgeous hand tools with smooth, wooden handles and metal heads that perform a variety of tasks. What little space remains is taken up with glue pots, cutting tools, paintbrushes and fragile booklets containing delicate sheets of gold.

It all serves as a reminder that books can be works of art.

“I think books will go the way of LP vinyl records. We have seen the shift to digital, but now people are turning back to LPs because you can hold them, open them up, read the covers: they are special,” Murray said.

“I have a room full of books at my house and I love to just sit in there, sometimes, and look at them. It is like being surrounded by your old friends.”

[box] Simper Bookbinders and Booksellers, 17E Lava St, Wbool. (03) 55 616499. Visit the website. Please note Murray is not taking new repair orders until January.[/box]

If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy…

Life as a soul sister

Art as medicine: Glenn Morgan

Shelley Knoll-Miller: cartoonist, illustrator, straw-bale house builder

Merran Koren: Carving out a creative life

From Panmure to Dubai: the art of Kathryn Ryan

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]ake a generous serving of Scottish and Irish music, add a dash of jazz and a pinch of Reggae and you might have something close to the magical formula of Likely Celts, although I doubt it.

That’s because the individual talents behind this funky three-piece band are what makes it so special.  In what should be an unlikely – rather than a likely – combination, Likely Celts brings together three seasoned, but very different South-West Victorian musicians in Merran Moir, Irishman Glenn Hudson and, more recently, Tim Conlan.

Merran (Scottish small pipe/tin whistle) comes from a background steeped in traditional Scottish music and she grew up as possibly the only girl at Warrnambool High School in the late 1970s to have mastered the bagpipes. Glenn (vocals/guitar) has the rich Irish accent of someone who moved to Australia only 10 years ago, but his musical heritage is rock, while local Tim (double/electric bass) cut his teeth on a diet of Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and The Beatles.

The trio – so fresh they have only just created a Facebook page – have focussed their energies on honing a mix of traditional and original songs and tunes that have proved both foot-tapping and mesmerising for those lucky enough to see them live.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]heir most recent gig at Fifteen Minutes of Fame at Crossley brought the house down with Merran’s blazing finger work on the tin whistle and her skill with the bellows pipes that, to the uninitiated, appeared to involve far more co-ordination than humanly possible.

Upon closer inspection, it is revealed that the “bag” is tucked under her left arm, while a small pair of bellows is tucked under her right – with both working in unison to create the “wind” – as her fingers run up and down the pipe to play each note. Got that?

“And you have to remember to smile while you’re playing,” Merran adds with a chuckle.

Of course you do.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] L [/dropcap]aughter, however, is never in short supply around Likely Celts, who have immersed themselves in the “trad” (traditional) Irish music scene in South-West Victoria purely for the joy of playing.

“Music is all about thoughts and feelings – how it makes you feel when you play it, and when you hear it,” says Glenn.

For Tim, it is an opportunity to stretch himself musically:

“It’s a whole new style to what I am used to, but I like getting out of my comfort zone.”

In earlier years, Merran performed and recorded with John Farnham for You’re the Voice, but it has been at least 10 years since she has done any regular performing due to all the other commitments life throws our way.

Likely Celts appears to be the right fit.

“There are no rules – we mix it up a bit and just have a great time,” she said.

So does the audience.

[box type=”bio”] You can find the Likely Celts on Facebook here. [/box]  

Can’t wait that long? Check out this sampler on Youtube: 

 If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy:

Inside sculptor Meg Finnegan’s Port Fairy studio

Glenn Morgan: Art as Medicine 

Shelley Knoll-Miller: cartoonist, illustrator, straw-bale house builder

Merran Koren: Carving out a creative life

From Panmure to Dubai: the art of Kathryn Ryan

Life through a surrealist lens: Berit Hampel

Each week we post a Gumtree gem:  an odd, funny or unusual item we have found on Gumtree, the online buy/sell/swap site. Most are from South-West Victoria or not far beyond.

This week, we uncovered a side line of skimpy wear available from an unexpected location….

[box] Black tutu skirt, brand new in packet. Multi sizes. 

Local pickup from Geelong @Waterworld (Norlane pool) $12. [/box]

  Find more Gumtree gems here…

Cheapest house ever?

Couch with an ouch

All I need is the air that I breathe

Always check the auto-correct!

Too short for this Hill’s Hoist

12 things for $12

Can’t afford a real horse?