PENSHURST businessowners are here to capitalise on a growing tourist economy.

Tourism Research Australia has said there has been 59 per cent more spent in the Southern Grampians this year than the year before the pandemic.

The little town sits on the key route between Port Fairy and Dunkeld, two rising and award-winning destinations.

At minimum, 700,000 people passed through Penshurst in 2017 according to VicRoads traffic data, and that number is sure to have swelled given the increased attention on the region.

Shop owners say trade has been thriving on Bell Street, with new shopping experiences bringing in first-time visitors.

Two women were making a splash on the corner with new artistic endeavours - one, a young entrepreneur excited to build her business and family in beautiful Penshurst, the other an experienced professional at building an arts enterprise in a small town.

“I am passionate about giving people a reason to stop.”

Opening her boutique nursery two days before Christmas was a dream come true for Sarah Vafidis.

After a long battle through the pandemic to open the doors of her first store, Penshurst’s newest establishment, Patience Petal.

The young mum-of-two told The Spectator it was a win made all the more special after two decades in a chronic health struggle.

“I had surgery when I was a teenager and they didn’t mean to but they gave me brain damage, nerve damage, which essentially made my nervous system stop working,” Ms Vafidis said.

Unlike the rest of us, instead of getting an adrenaline spike when surprised, emotional or physically active, Ms Vafidis’ whole body would shut down leading to between 40 and 50 fainting spells a day.

“A few years later after being treated very badly and being in a wheelchair I got a pacemaker for my heart which stopped all the fainting but made working a normal job very difficult.”

Since her teen years, she has run her own businesses to give her the flexibility she needed, like selling art and baked goods at markets.

She and her family moved to Penshurst for the space to use a wheelchair, and ride horses; a key part of her rehabilitation to full activity.

Patience Petal is born of a love for flowers, the family kitchen, and all things pastel and elegant.

“It is something that mum has always said to me if I was hungry or hangry - ‘Patience Petal’,” Ms Vafidis said.

“I say it to my kids. After my daughter was born, we gave her ‘Rose’ as part of her middle name.”

She said her young children both loved the opportunity to focus on their home garden and indoor plants throughout the months spent in lockdown, and she discovered a new purpose when she realised how much fun she had doing it.

For her, that naturally led onto developing a space to share that with others in retail.

As a younger businessowner, she wants to spearhead Penshurst’s digital entrance by encouraging trending hashtags like #ishoppedatpenshurst.

At the same time, she wanted to honour the town’s heritage; her flower bouquet paper is styled with newspaper print to callback the store’s original use as the newspaper press.

“People are always going to travel, it’s a major, major tourist route,” she said.

“But there’s never been a gift shop, for instance, to stop and actually shop.”

“Adam next door has bought the milk bar back up and revitalised that completely, and people are happy to come back.

“Penshurst is quite a hub town; you go that way, you’ve got the Grampians, you go that way you have got the beach, that way you’ve got Hamilton and beyond.

She pointed out the growing amount of Airbnb’s in the town, and the work being put into promoting the beautiful Kolor Mansion for overnight stays.

“It could become quite a destination town,” Ms Vafidis said.

“Maldon, up near Daylesford is a sleepy, quaint little old town with beautiful buildings and lots of independent retailers, and you go there just because it’s an experience of the whole town as adorable and put together.

“Businesses are coming. We just all help each other to grow, then we can be more of a community town instead of a drive-through.

“That’s what I want to do and get involved in.”

“Country people need access to beautiful things, not just city people.”

That’s from Ms Sarah Gabriel, whose success building the Lauriston Press art gallery in South Kyneton over 25 years has been in conjunction with the rise of the entire Kyneton-Daylesford region.

Ms Gabriel has moved her art business to Bell Street in Penshurst, providing classes and workshops out of the old butcher’s building under the name ‘Gabriel Inspired’.

“I see Penshurst the township has a huge potential for a creative precinct in the western district that is connected to larger towns such as Hamilton and Warrnambool,” she told The Spectator.

“Even Kyneton has flourished with new creative businesses because it is close to Melbourne. But Penshurst has the added advantage of being a connect-the-dots between Hamilton, Ballarat and the coastal region.”

“The architecture is so beautiful, it’s so scenic in Penshurst.

“And the township is incredibly supportive of business and they are very proud and very friendly.”

For her, the number one key to good business is listening to the needs of the community.

“Country people need access to beautiful things, not just city people. So, I opened a gallery to provide a space for all that creativity in the area to be funnelled and seen so that people could come and enjoy and purchase a high standard of art for their homes,” she said.

“It is important to give people a reason to visit regional towns and provide a few different experiences.

“There is the space to provide people with the opportunity to take a risk in business too.

“You have to be a risk taker, you have to collaborate, and you have to work hard and provide something unique.”

Her own decision to start anew came when she realised how many artists and musicians were moving to the area.

“Because I had met so many creatives in the Western District, I was looking for a base to purchase a property that I could work from with my artwork,” Ms Gabriel said.

“And that blossomed into running workshops and providing a really exciting creative artistic place for people to come and buy and experience art.”

Ms Gabriel has been working within the community to establish a unique creative space where people can come for printmaking, exhibitions and art sales.

Her main goal was to connect people, to help reduce isolation and loneliness, and to provide a place for the community to meet.

“I work as an art therapist casually in drug and alcohol recovery,” she said.

“The idea is the more that you can find something creative as an outlet in your life to connect and to talk about and to have something wonderful in your life.”

When people come to her and say, ‘Penshurst? Why Penshurst?’, she tells them she moved because the town is beautiful, and there was so much business travelling through the roundabout.