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'Australia's best milkshakes' just a daytrip from Melbourne
 Anyone born in Australia before 1970 will almost certainly remember the power of a milkshake -- rich, creamy and thoroughly decadent.
Today, milkshakes are harder to find owing to the popularity of refrigerated dairy drinks. Equally rare are the family-run corner stores called 'milk bars' that made and sold these once everyday treats.
Luckily, a drive up the road from Melbourne through the tiny town of Tongala will take you past two large milkshake cans with a sign promising 'Australia's Best Milkshakes. What exactly constitutes a 'best milkshake' is possibly subjective. But the promise is enough for people to make the trip.
Tongala (population 1500) is home to the Golden Cow Dairy Education and Tourism Centre where these reputedly memorable milkshakes can be found. The Center operates a working dairy with regular milking sessions showing how milking is done. There are young calves to meet, historic dairy machinery, informative displays about dairying, irrigation and landcare and fascinating activities to inform and entertain. When people finish learning about dairy cows and the milk those cows produce, the natural next step is to put the bold claim on the sign out front to the test by having a milkshake served fresh in the on-site milk bar.
While the milkshakes alone may be worth the trip, families will enjoy other attractions available in and around the area.
Fifteen kilometres up the road from Tongala is the slightly larger rural town of Kyabram, a community attracting retirees and visitors to the region famous for fruit, jams and toppings.
The history of Kyabram goes back to 1840 when the first squatter arrived. In the 1870s formal land selection enabled wheat and dairy farming to develop followed by fruit orchards in the 1890s. Today, the community thrives on a combination of agricultural production, secondary industry and tourism.
See and do
Kids will love the Kyabram Fauna Park, which features a 57-metre walk-through aviary, solar-heated reptile house for snakes and freshwater crocodiles, ponds with waterfowl that can be viewed from a two-storey observation tower and 55 hectares of bushland with the chance to spot 400 free-roaming animal species, including Cape Barren geese, ibises, a rare alpine dingo, Tasmanian devils, wombats, koalas, echidnae, kangaroos and emus.
History buffs will find the nearby Hazelman's Cottage fascinating. The cottage was built by a Frenchman who travelled to the USA as a cabin boy, fought in the American Civil War at the age of 14, and then moved to Australia where he became a boundary rider fathered 13 children in his one family, grew wheat and raised dairy cattle.
Kyabram also features a rather curious display of miniaturized mansions, hotels, and farmhouses from around the world carefully landscaped into a homeowner's garden. The display is open to the public daily.
Other attractions include the Edis Park Arboretum, Willowmere (a gracious Edwardian home converted into a restaurant) and the Killamont Homestead offering a sense of life in the 1880s.
And what about the milkshakes? Well, after a day discovering and experiencing life in the Kyabram-Tongala community, it may well be worth one more dairy-powered pick-me-up before heading back down the highway to Melbourne.
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