People and Lifestyle
Leanne Leverton – Myrtleford
How long have you lived in the area?
Pretty much all my life. My family’s third–fourth generation from Myrtleford. I was local born and raised, and moved away, like a lot of people after school, and came back to raise my family here.
What do you do for a living?
I’m the owner–operator of Nosh Deli Cafe, where we serve good, wholesome house–made meals. All the cakes are made on site by myself and we cook fresh daily. We provide hot meals and cold as well as sandwiches, and come summer we’ll be doing salads.
What are your hobbies or interests?
I’ve got some friends and we do motorbike riding, and I’ve got two dogs that take up the other bit of my time. Cooking was very much a passion of mine – a lot of people in town know me for my baking. But now that’s what I do all day, every day, it’s not so much what I’ll be doing on the weekend.
What do you like about the area?
The sense of community we have here is lovely – when someone’s down, we pick them up. It is my ancestral home, it’s been 3–4 generations that we’ve been raised here. As much as I don’t like that things have closed and we have reduced services in regards to government services, we’re not far from Wangaratta, we’re not far from Albury, all those big centres. So we have all the luxury that affords us being rural without actually being miles from any metropolitan zone.
Where would you take visitors to showcase the area?
We’d do the riverwalk and up to the lookout and go out to the lake. My husband’s family are not from here, so we often play tour guide. And depending on what they want to do, even the drive to Bright is lovely. Beechworth isn’t far away if they want a bit of Ned Kelly–ish type of stuff. My daughter was part of the group of young people that painted the public toilets at the park. So we would get in the car and show them the local work that’s been done there.
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Is there anything you would change about the area?
Myrtleford has evolved. There’s a lot more pride in our community than there used to be, there’s lot more happening in town, and more eateries and things like that. We came back to Myrtleford to raise our child. That says a lot for the town – the schooling and what’s available. My daughter was part of the Scouting movement here. So I wouldn’t change anything. As a community, there’s things that we can do, and that’ll happen with the evolution of the community.