Play, Eat, Stay: Our top Shipwreck Coast tips

The Shipwreck Coast is a wild and beautiful stretch of coastline in southwest Victoria starting from Cape Otway and ending in Port Fairy. Our dairy is right in the middle of the Shipwreck Coast, and only 20 minutes inland from The Twelve Apostles. We love to welcome visitors to our region, and our team loves to live here! So we have compiled our staff members’ top tips for travellers and locals to explore.

PLAY: Mount Noorat at sunrise

Recommended by Jacqui

Early risers will be pleased to hear that our Jacqui absolutely loves Mount Noorat at sunrise, which can be accessed via the one-hour Alan Marshall Discovery Trail Walk. Mount Noorat is one of Australia’s best preserved dry volcanic craters, and offers stunning views of the surrounding countryside. There’s nothing like standing on the summit watching the morning mist being broken by the sunrise! Jacqui says the experience is something that’s “always worth getting up early for.”

Image by @visitgreatoceanroad

PLAY: Dry Lake Walk 

Recommended by Jess

Families on the lookout for a fun outdoor experience will love the Dry Lake Walk in Terang. Jess often takes her two boys who love walking (and sometimes playing chasey) through the tunnel of meandering oak trees. The adventure leads through to open grazing paddocks, and Jess says the view from the top paddock, looking back over the township of Terang with Mount Noorat in the distance, is breathtaking. Local tip: make sure you shut the gate behind you!

Image from @cathy3124 on Instagram

EAT: Brunch and coffee near The Twelve Apostles

Walking can be hungry work! Once you're done, follow your nose to our very own Schulz Organic Creamery & Cafe. Market Lane coffee? Bagel or toastie? Cheese board anyone? Did we mention homemade scones with a big dollop of our freshly made Schulz organic pure cream, go on … you’ve earned it!

EAT: Wine and Pizza on the Shipwreck Coast

Recommended by Jess

If you’d rather spend the afternoon relaxing with a glass of wine then Jess recommends The Keayang Maar Winery in Dixie. Keayang Maar is a small family run vineyard who, like us, are passionate about glass bottle returns and reducing their carbon footprint. Pop in for a tasting or stay a while with a glass of wine. For the full experience, stay a little longer and enjoy a meal – Jess just can’t say no to their Italian-style woodfired pizzas.

Wine tastings from Wed - Sun

mmmm pizza

EAT: Dinner in Peterborough  

Recommended by Hila Perry, Pastry Chef at Schulz Organic Creamery and Cafe

Hila loves a winter warmer, and told us that when she doesn’t feel like cooking she heads for a short drive to the coast. The Peterborough House Cafe & Restaurant has lovely ocean views, and takeaway is available if you’re on the move or staying nearby. Hila says “from Wednesday to Sunday evenings they serve the most delicious, home-made, Indian curries.”

Warming curries

STAY: Shipwreck Coast accommodation 

There are plenty of fantastic places to stay along the Shipwreck Coast, with lots of holiday homes available to rent on AirBnB. Port Campbell is just a short drive from our Timboon home, and is a funky coastal close to national parks. Check out House on the hill cottage for a great coastal stay option. How’s that view?

OVERLOOKING THE BAY

Closer to home, Timboon Tiny Homes is set beside the Timboon Ice Creamery. You can choose your flavour of accommodation - Mint, Caramel or Raspberry. Located in the heart of Timboon, each renovated shipping container offers light-filled accommodation, surrounded by beautiful native bushland. A short distance from the attractions of the Shipwreck Coast. Plus you can walk to Timboon Railway Shed Distillery and definitely worth it if you want to beat lining up for their deliciously creamy ice cream!

IMAGES FROM @TIMBOONTINYHOMES ON INSTAGRAM

A PERFECT PLACE TO RELAX @TIMBOONTINYHOMES - CARAMEL HOME (PICTURED)

There are many excellent businesses in our region, and this is just a taste! Come on down and ask a local for more recommendations – or visit the official tourism website of the area for more tips and places to explore!

Milk in Glass: Our Year Two Report

Easter 2021 marks two years since we launched Milk in Glass and we’ve been blown away by the support from our retailers, supporters, followers and the community. When we kicked off our Milk In Glass initiative, our main goal was to put a dent in the amount of plastic packaging we use...

...and we have! To date we’ve saved over 17,000 kilos of plastic. To put that in perspective, we're told that this equates to the weight of about 13 Volkswagen Kombi vans. Now, that's a LOT of plastic bottles! 

We now deliver over 5000 reusable glass bottles of organic milk weekly, to over 50 retailers Victoria-wide, with a return rate of 88% of bottles refilled and reissued in 2020. The year was understandably a difficult year for returning bottles, with movement restricted in Victoria and lockdown orders in place, but we were still really pleased with this return rate result. We expect the return rate to head back closer to 100% in 2021. 

On average, every bottle that has left the dairy full of beautiful, fresh, full-cream milk has been returned, refilled and sent out again 8 times. This number is much higher than what we thought it would be, and we couldn't be more proud - plus, as time goes on, the glass bottles number of reuses only continues to grow past 8 times which is fantastic!

Here are some of the cold hard (or in our case, cool and milky) facts from two years of Milk in Glass:

In addition, in 2020 we were nominated as a finalist in the Innovative Products or Services category of the Premier’s Sustainability Awards for our Milk in Glass Bottles initiative. Even though we did not win our categories award we were humbled to be recognised for our Milk in Glass initiative. 

So, we wanted to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has passionately bought our Milk in Glass and returned their bottles! It's YOU that has allowed us to have had such impressive success in our first two years. Let's keep these amazing stats continuing throughout this next year. We also wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who supported our Pozible crowdfunding campaign in 2018. Because of you, we were able to begin this journey of sustainability and less environmental impact.

So thank you all. We’re raising a glass (bottle) to everyone who continues to support this initiative! If you’re interested in purchasing Schulz Organic Dairy Milk in Glass from a retailer near you, you can suggest a retailer here. 

Cheers, 

Team Schulz

FEEL GOOD FEBRUARY - HOW DO SCHULZ MAKE GREEK YOGURT?

Gertrude Grocer in Fitzroy Melbourne

Friday is known as yogurt day at Schulz Organic Dairy. Why Fridays? Well, to get the right creamy, pot-set consistency we love, we need to use extra fresh organic milk – and on Fridays we can ‘milk and make’ on the same day! If milk is even a couple of days old (still fresh by anyone’s standards!) then the yogurt will most likely turn out runny and will not hold its form, compared with using our fresh organic milk that is milked on the day. This process also ensures that we end up with a more fuller-flavoured and consistently textured yogurt!

So on Fridays, we milk our cows in the mornings and make our pot-set organic Greek and Natural yogurt varieties in the afternoons, all right here on the Schulz Organic Dairy Farm. What a beautiful (and long) day to be a dairy farmer! Additionally, transforming our milk into our delicious dairy products right here on the farm saves our milk being transported in big vats by truck to other facilities, reducing our food miles too.

Taste difference: Our Greek Yogurt is tarter and slightly thicker than our Natural Yogurt. 

No preservatives and no added flavours.

How do you make Greek Yogurt? What does Schulz Organic Dairy do differently? 

This is where we get technical.

First, we pasteurise our certified organic milk at 80C for a few minutes. This denatures the proteins allowing them to bond together creating a firmer yogurt. 

Then, we cool it down to a more tepid temperature, and mix in our strains of cultures: probiotic cultures, acidophilus, bifidus, L. Casein and traditional Greek culture. The inoculation process takes around 20 minutes, and then it’s time to pour, pack, seal, date and weigh!

Once packed, the yogurt heads into an incubator to be held at around 40 degrees overnight  after which we gradually lower the temperature down to a typical refrigerator 3-4C over the course of a few hours. 

And this incubation is when the magic starts to happen. 

During incubation, the cream rises to the top and forms a thick layer. While other dairies homogenise the milk, we believe in offering the whole product as nature intended. As we don’t add stabilisers or gelatine to any of our products, the whey liquid also remains in the pot, sitting just below the creamy top layer. The whey is one of the best bits of all – you can stir-it back through the yogurt, drink it, or do what Simon does and add it to a juice for a health kick. It’s good for you! 

By the time we get back in on Monday, the yogurt is all ready to go. Once the pots reach 4C or cooler, the yogurt is considered ‘pot-set’ and is ready to sell at our Farmgate Cafe, through retailers and in big tubs to our food service customers. 

Product Sizes:

Retail - 500g and 1kg tub

Food Service - 4kg and 10kg 

Our Retailers

Farmer’s Markets

Our Friesian and Jersey girls get to roam the green paddocks after milking

We're Sustainability Award Finalists!

We’re finalists! We are proud to announce that we have been nominated as a finalist in the Innovative Products or Services category of the Premier’s Sustainability Awards 2020 for our Milk In Glass Bottles initiative. The Innovative Products or Services Award category recognises outstanding innovation in products or services that contribute to sustainable outcomes over the past year. Now in its 18th year, the Premier’s Sustainability Awards are Victoria’s most highly recognised annual sustainability awards program comprising 10 categories.

When we kicked off our Milk In Glass initiative, our main goal was to put a dent in the amount of plastic packaging we use. We now deliver over 5000 reusable glass bottles of organic milk weekly, to over 50 retailers Victoria-wide, with a return rate of 95% of bottles refilled and reissued. The initiative has averted 10,068kg of plastic bottles from landfill, as of May 2020 – incredible! This recognition would not be possible without the help of all of our pledgers, Pozible supporters, Contain Design Studio and Swear Words for designing the bottle, loyal Milk In Glass customers and Milk In Glass retailers out there - we wouldn't be here without you and we salute you! 

The Victorian Premier’s Sustainability awards are a fantastic way to raise awareness of and celebrate Victorian groups, organisations and businesses who are leading the way to a more sustainable future, and we’re proud to be a part of it.​ Wish us luck for the announcement of the winners on Wednesday the 16th of December!