Show off your town without playing tour guide.

Your people are coming to Stroud. Here’s how to show family or friends a genuinely good time with less stress for you.

There’s a moment on the drive into Stroud when the valley opens up and you understand why a man named Robert Dawson, travelling through this country in 1826, wrote in his journal that he had never beheld so sweet a spot.

Two hundred years later, the valley still has that effect on people.

Stroud is one of the prettiest country towns in New South Wales, with many surviving buildings from the colonial era still in use today.

Your job as host is simply to walk people through it slowly and let the place make its own case.

Start the day right

The café with the best coffee and best food is BillyT Café, with best service-with-a-smile to match. It’s Stroud’s early opener and is always busy with breakfast commuters but there’s usually a cosy sunny spot for a relaxed and delicious start to your day.

For a morning treat you could always try a generously scooped ice cream cone from Stroud Milkbar with a side order of lollies from the old-fashioned jars that fill the wall displays. Keep them in your pocket for the self-guided heritage walk that follows.

The shaded footpaths, the Georgian facades, the old post office and court house with its cedar fittings, it’s the kind of town that reveals itself on foot rather than from a car window.

Stroud Central Hotel does a good pub lunch when you’ve worked up an appetite, or pack a picnic and take it up Silo Hill.

The view from Silo Hill is the one that stops people mid-sentence. The unique underground grain silos built by the Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) are still there, and from the top of the hill you get a view across the Karuah River valley that hasn’t changed much since Dawson stood here and decided this was the place.

Two cannons sit up top as well. Nobody is entirely sure who they’re pointing at, which adds a certain character.

Send them off to explore

Quambi House is a convict-built Georgian school house and museum run by the Stroud Historical Society, displaying furniture, clothing, photographs and other objects from the late 1800s to the mid 1900s. It’s the kind of museum that makes you stay longer than you planned, especially when a volunteer opens the door and starts talking.

The Stroud Show, rated among the top 20 agricultural shows in NSW, runs over three days and draws crowds from across the region.

And the Stroud Brick and Rolling Pin Throwing Competition is exactly what it sounds like: an annual event of cheerful absurdity that has been running long enough to be considered a legitimate tradition. Chuck a brick, chuck a pin and kids can chuck a rubber chicken… it’s country town silliness to fill your day with smiles.

End the day together

The Farmers Wife Distillery at Allworth, fifteen minutes from town, is where the afternoon goes. Multi award-winning gin, grazing boards of local produce, rustic farmhouse pizza and a setting that makes people put their phones face-down on the table without being asked. Book ahead on weekends. The afternoon has a way of becoming evening here without anyone quite deciding to let it.

For dinner in Stroud, Three Birdies at Stroud Country Club does excellent evening meals with views that make it worth staying for.

The Stroud Central Hotel, grand and country-style in the way that only a regional pub can pull off, covers the dinner classics with ease.

Or for something that has universal appeal to all ages, the generously stacked pizzas with garlic bread from Stroud Milk Bar & Cafe will hit just the right Stroud spot.

For guests staying longer

Gloucester is forty minutes north via the scenic Bucketts Way, with the Buccan Buccan mountains looming larger as you drive.

The drive itself is the point as much as the destination, but you’ll love the very scenic riverside location of Gloucester District Park.

The Monkerai Valley, hidden down a back road where the Karuah River runs and platypus have been spotted by people patient enough to wait, is one of those places you can’t find on a tourist map, which is precisely why it’s worth knowing about.

One last thing

Stroud is located along the Bucketts Way, a scenic detour off the Pacific Highway on the way to Gloucester. Stroud (and Gloucester too) is the town that rewards the decision to leave the highway and take the long way. Encourage your guests to do exactly that.

You bring the people. Stroud will handle the rest.