Bendigo Pottery worker Samantha Miller isn't sugar-coating how depressing the last three months of flood-induced closures have been.
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"Coming to work has been like coming to a ghost town," the office administrator says of a site hit by as much as a foot-and-a-half of water in summer storms.
But that dark chapter is now coming to a close.
Sections of the Epsom complex damaged in the December/January floods are re-opening to the public from Thursday, March 28 - just in time for Easter.
Those areas include the main gallery, the education area and the artisan studios.
"[The artisans] are ecstatic. It's been so nice to walk around this morning and see everyone smiling," Ms Miller said.
"They are all busy sweeping, cleaning up and getting everything ready.
"A few of their studios had been completely gutted. Others had everything moved out so floors could be cleaned."
Tradies still hard at work
Not all parts of the large complex are ready to re-open. The antiques centre and cafe will not open for Easter.
"There's going to be works going on at the pottery for, probably, the next six months," Ms Miller said.
"The floods damaged a lot of our flooring. This place is heritage-listed so we need to be very conscious with what we are doing with repairs."
The pottery had initially hoped to re-open by early February but the scale of repairs proved larger than anticipated.
"We are taking it as an opportunity. When we re-open the entire complex it will be bigger and better than it ever was," Ms Miller said.
Owners are yet to reveal what those improvements might be.
Ms Millar encouraged people to book in to some of the classes taking place over the holidays and to be mindful of shortened opening hours at the complex.
For more details, visit the Bendigo Pottery's website.
The Bendigo Pottery was founded in 1858 when Scottish migrant George Duncan Guthrie stumbled on a clay deposit and turned it into a successful pottery business.
The business has gone through many hard times and struggled to survive in the 1950s before businessman Bill Derham kicked off a 1960s resurgence that brought a new interest in pottery.
The site became a tourist attraction in the 1970s.