Shepparton sits at the heart of the state. A city of almost 70 000 living by the banks of the Goulburn River surrounded by river red gum forest and thousands of hectares of fertile irrigated agricultural plains. It is a busy city at the crossroads of several major highways. Here the Goulburn River is joined by creeks and rivers, the landscape crisscrossed by irrigation canals, the native forest giving way to an oasis of fruit trees. Home to people from around the globe speaking 50 different languages, it is a place where you can find hidden family cafes and eat dishes from around the world. It is also place to explore the architecture of magnificent old food factories and head out into the blocks of orchards to find families selling their fruit by the side of the road. This is a city with an arts hub that celebrates the world’s oldest living culture. It is also a centre of development and innovation. Shepparton is both a place of old-fashioned values and the centre of a rapidly changing food bowl that grows a quarter of the state’s agricultural wealth.

Dookie is a small country town nestled between two great granite outcrops and surrounded by generations of family-owned grazing and cropping properties. The soil is deep, rich, and red, and when the long warm days of autumn are broken by rains, farmers sow their grains which turn the red patchwork of ploughed paddocks a deep green as wheat and barley sprout and grow over winter. In spring, they are joined by the bright yellow blocks of flowering canola. See the landscape for yourself walking the Mulana nin iyoga walking trail Mount Major, cycling the rail trail or over a glass of wine at Rye at Tallis. In town, coffee and jelly cake at the Dookie Emporium, sampling the Dookie Burger at the General Store and a cold drink at the Gladstone Hotel should also be on your must-taste list.

Mooroopna, a historic river town with a strong industrial past, sits over the Goulburn adjacent to Shepparton. The river shaped the town, its waters powering mills and machines, with many of the buildings still standing by the riverbanks. At harvest time, the orchards on the outskirts of town are covered with people wearing deep-pocketed aprons in which they pick the fruit and drop them in bins. The region’s already multicultural vibe gets a boost as united nations of pickers and backpackers bring in the crop. When you visit, pick up something for the road at the bakeries, or settle in for a meal at Bill & Beats in the old Commercial Hotel. Must-do experiences include joining the Mooroopna Heritage Walk and Flat’s Walk from the picturesque Chinaman’s Gardens named after Ah Wong, a Chinese migrant, who set up a market garden on this site in 1877 and supplied vegetables to the district., If you have little ones in tow, make your way to Kids Town, a vibrant community-established open-air playground. Nature lovers will enjoy visiting Gemmill Swamp Wildlife Reserve, approximately 170 hectares of Goulburn River floodplain forest and wetland between the urban centres of Mooroopna and Shepparton.

There used to be riverboats in Murchison when it was an inland port like Echuca with steam-powered boats moving goods up and down the Goulburn and along the Murray. It was once a busy town, the crossroad between the Bendigo and Ovens gold rushes, a place of two flour mills, blacksmiths, butchers and drapers. When the trains came, the river traffic stopped and Murchison became a quiet rural town. Today that boom era of wealth and growth remains in its legacy of once grand old pubs, fine churches, colonial-era state schools, and other stately buildings. Flowing alongside the main thoroughfare of Stevenson Street is the Goulburn River, a quiet but powerful force meandering through the river gum forest and surrounding farmland. This mix of bush and heritage makes Murchison such an inviting place. Ancient river gums stand opposite historic hotels and quiet bush tracks head out into gold mining country. It is also the home of a world-famous meteorite, and some would say an equally famous Bakery and Tearoom. Pick up some flowers from Avonlea, and get among the scenery along the rail trail.

Tatura may be a small town, but it's home to some big businesses. It is a place of historic buildings and one of the nation’s centres of agricultural innovation. Tatura is a busy place where farming families come to shop and socialise, but it seems to move to the steady but slow beat of its own drum. Surrounded by some of the most productive orchards and irrigated pastures in the country, Tatura and its surrounds produce hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food every year. Tatura was also at the centre of a network of P.O.W. camps during WWII, the history of the interned Germans and Italians told sensitively in the town’s extensive museum. Tat, as it’s known to locals, is home to the largest dairy expo in the Southern Hemisphere every January. After that, fruit harvest is one of the busiest times of the year. In spring, the cherries ripen, and local orchardists put up signs outside their packing sheds and homes to make their little annual farm gates. The process is repeated in late summer and autumn when the apples and pears are harvested, and people make the pilgrimage travelling the highways and backroads to make the most of Tatura’s seasonal bounty. Make sure these local landmarks are on your list: the butchers, the bakers, the pubs (top, middle and bottom), the water tower, Cussen Park and the home of every chef’s favourite: Tatura Butter, stocked at the town’s two independent grocers.