Close to some of Victoria's best ski resorts and classified by the National Trust as an historic town, Yackandandah (known colloquially as Yack) is getting to be quite a familiar bedfellow to film.
Yackandandah has been featured in numerous Australian period films, such as the tele-movie The Far Country, and stars in its own right as the main location of the 2004 movie, Strange Bedfellows.
The film starred well-known Australian actors Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) and Michael Caton (The Castle) as two very straight country blokes who, out of financial desperation, declare themselves a gay couple to exploit new tax laws benefiting such unions.
When a tenacious tax inspector, played by internationally renowned Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father), checks on them, the blokes are suddenly forced to pose openly as a "loving gay couple" in a town that knows them as anything but.
Getting there
Particularly during the ski season, from the start of the Australian winter in June to around the middle of spring, those traveling to Victoria's alpine ski resorts may consider a side journey north to Yackandandah to discover the delights of this historic town and rub shoulders with some of the town's actors (nearly everyone in Yackandandah has appeared in the movie) at one of its pubs or at the local general store which sells hardware, hot food and a helping of groceries.
If you're visiting Victoria from the north through the Hume Highway, leave the highway at the border town of Wodonga and head south towards Myrtleford. Yackandandah is about halfway between Wodonga and Myrtleford.
If taking the Great Alpine Road from Melbourne through Bairnsdale, head north at Myrtleford to Yackandandah.
All roads lead to town
There is a saying in Victoria's North East region that all roads lead to Yackandandah. In fact, if you do get lost in the region, you'll likely discover that the first signpost you see points the way to Yackandandah.
Once a prosperous gold town, Yackandandah is on the old main road from Sydney to Melbourne, but since new highways were built east and west of the town, it now sits within the triangular country region bounded by the Great Alpine Road and the Hume and Kiewa Valley Highways.
Once in Yackandandah, discover a quality of life found only in a country town away from the Big Smoke.
Take a 20-minute stroll down High Street and take in all of the locations featured in Strange Bedfellows. You'd learn something about the town's historical features and gold mining past as well.
And a short drive from town brings you to 80 cellar door wineries in Victoria's North East. These include Rutherglen, King Valley, Alpine Valleys, Beechworth and Glenrowan.
Why Yackandandah?
"I wanted to shoot the movie in the country and Yackandandah was a charming town set in a beautiful region," Strange Bedfellows director Dean Murphy said. "Members of the crew, who didn't know Yackandandah existed in the first place, became such great fans of the town!
"When we weren’t shooting, they would go off in groups to ski, do winery walkabout, antique shopping through Beechworth, and explore. They just couldn't believe all this could be found so near one town. In fact, after the shoot, they planned to return to ski in winter, of course making sure there was a stopover at the Yack."
Fast facts
- Yackandandah is said to have derived from two Aboriginal words meaning "rock" and "water-hole" which relate to one large rock sitting on top of another in what is now known as Yackandandah Creek. It has also been claimed that Yackandandah means "country of hills."
- The population of Yackandandah is estimated at around 1000.
- The first gold in Yackandandah was discovered in December 1852.
- Australia's first Australian-born governor-general, Sir Isaac Isaacs, was born in Yackandandah in 1855.
- Strange Bedfellows director and writer Dean Murphy grew up in nearby Kergunyah, which is 38 kilometres away, and spent much of his childhood in and around Yackandandah.
- Some of Victoria’s best ski resorts — Mt Buffalo, Mt Hotham, Falls Creek, and Mt Buller — are from one hour to two and a half hours away.
- The Great Alpine Road runs from Wangaratta to Bairnsdale and is a 308-kilometre all-weather, sealed road.
- Yackandandah is 24 kilometres from Beechworth, 34 kilometres from Chiltern, 42 kilometres from Rutherglen, and 35 kilometres from Albury-Wodonga on the Victoria-New South Wales border. It is 295 kilometres or about three hours from Melbourne via the Hume Freeway, then the Great Alpine Road or Kiewa Valley Highway.
