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Fusspots is one of half a dozen vintage stores which have put Inglewood on the map.
But its owner Catherine Norman says the town needs something other than antiques to really stamp the picturesque gold-rush town on the tourist trail.
“The vintage stuff is fantastic and we get people travelling up from Melbourne, from Geelong, from Bendigo and interstate to shop here,” she said.
“We’ve created a hub, which fits with the old-world feel of the town.
“We’ve had the Eucalyptus museum now open five days a week, we’ve got the nearby Melville Caves, we’ve got Inglewood aged beef which supplies top restaurants in Melbourne.
“But we rely on visitors … and everyone wants visitors.
“It would be great if we had something else really noteworthy open in town, whether that be a noteworthy restaurant or a really great bakery like in Bridgewater.”
While it is the “right entrepreneur with the right idea” to whom Ms Norman is appealing, the owner of the business next door said governments could create the conditions to attract that noteworthy thing.
Peter Moore runs the supermarket, newsagent and hardware store across the main drag from Fusspots.
A local business identity of three decades, health services board chairman and former head of the town’s tourism and development, Mr Moore is a man with several irons in the fire in Inglewood.
He said there is a number of measures which governments could do tomorrow which would trigger development in the town.
“The hospital has plans drawn up and costed for a dementia wing,” he said.
“They’ve just been sitting there for a few years waiting for someone to fund it.”
Mr Moore said there were currently between 25 to 35 people within the Loddon Shire who were in need of the facility.
“It would allow local people to stay local and enable more family visits,” he said.
“There currently isn’t any facility for them anywhere in the shire.
“It would also mean jobs and would secure the future of the hospital.”
The health services chairman said the dementia wing would use existing kitchens and other facilities within the hospital, keeping the price tag to a minimum.
“It's been costed at under $3 million, which is nothing these days,” he said.
But while the town waited for that boost to its services, Mr Moore said Inglewood was lacking one of the most fundamental requirements for growth – space.
“We need more space for affordable housing,” he said.
“We need a bigger population – we’ve got two school in Inglewood, one in Bridgewater and we need families to stay here and come here to keep those schools alive.
“But there’s just not enough land on the market.
“One of the levels of government could offer funding to develop a couple of hundred blocks of land and make it available for affordable housing.”
And Mr Moore reckons he knows how to draw more new arrivals to Inglewood.
“There is the potential for a commuter train to Bendigo which would make this town a much more attractive place to live,” he said.
The track was used “by the occasional steam train full of visitors” until the track was damaged by floods in 2011.
“A commuter rail between here and Bendigo would run through Marong and Eaglehawk and link right into Bendigo railway station,” Mr Moore said.
“With the [proposed] industrial estate in Marong it could take kids to school in Bendigo and workers to Marong, and take vehicles off the road.”
He wasn’t the only one upset by the flood damage to the railway track.
Gordon Turnbull has been farming 900 hectares four kilometres north of Bridgewater for three decades. He remembers when rail carried his grain to Melbourne for export.
“You often look at that infrastructure and think, it’s a shame to see it washed away and not be used again,” Mr Turnbull said.
The sheep and cereal farmer said the shift from rail to road freight had added extra costs to local farmers and seen them lose profit margins.
“We had a local delivery point about six kilometres away and we ran our own truck there,” he said. “We're now 80-odd-km away and we contract out the trucking.
“Now we shunt grain to Dunolly or through Elmore, that puts a lot of stress on our roads and it puts further costs onto us.”
It’s not the only loss inflicted on farmers by the changes to freight transport.
Mr Turnbull said he believed it had contributed to the departure of GrainCorp from town, which has been now been replaced by Southern Stockfeeds.
“Essentially we’ve gone from human consumption to stock feed,” the farmer said.
“In a year like last year that doesn’t make a difference, because of the dry conditions the crop wasn’t up to scratch anyway.
“But in a good year it does, if we can grow malt and barley instead of feed barley we can send it to have beer made out of it, for example.
“If we grow milling flour it can be used to make biscuits.
“That does affect the price you get.”
But even though the freight network was becoming more reliant on trucks, Mr Turnbull said roads were also suffering from a lack of funding.
“That’s a real bug bear for us,” he said.
“There's a lot of old bridges around here and down the track I just don’t know what’s going to happen to them in the future.”
With a week to go until the federal election and the seat of Murray expected to go down to the wire there is still a glimmer of hope that Mr Turnbull – no relation to Malcolm – will see an 11th hour pledge to secure their future.